


That First of Days After

by plushbug



Category: Snow White and the Huntsman (2012)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Affection, Bickering, Cuddling & Snuggling, Friendship, Gen, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, Love, Medieval Medicine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-16
Updated: 2013-12-17
Packaged: 2018-01-04 21:05:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 38,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1085684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plushbug/pseuds/plushbug
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>By the morning of Snow White's coronation, there is time to arrange that all her best friends shall stand close in her sight for the event.  How, then, does her Huntsman manage to end up lurking uneasily on the edge of the crowd, at the other end of a church hall the length of a football field?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Terce, and Victory

**Author's Note:**

> This started out in the fall of 2012 as a modest gap-filler meant to tuck neatly into the very, very loosely implied gap of a day between Ravenna's fall and Snow White's coronation, and not do a lot more than answer the question above. Then it got away from me...so that nine chapters and around 40,000 words later, I've ended up working in so much bridging, bugfixing, and backstory patching material, that looking ahead to any possibilities whatsoever for a sequel film, there's no way this has a prayer of ever tucking in neatly. Now seems as good a time as any to bow to the inevitable and call it the beginning of a branching AU. 
> 
> I'm currently working on what promises to be a decently novel-length sequel.

* * *

 "Oh, God, how does anyone bear it?"

From the steps before the donjon tower, Snow White surveyed the castle forecourt. It was swarming with men and horses, and now every cart they could muster to bear in the wounded and dead from the beach, where the tide was rising apace.

Sir Thomas and a handful of Duke Hammond's other senior knights were marshalling the milling crowd into rough order, those at the gate separating the living from the dead as they were borne in, and horses towards the stables. From deeper within the castle walls and the hoardings lining the entry court, others herded disarmed prisoners towards the cells in the north tower. Those wounded still able to walk were being directed into the great hall of the donjon, past the staircase she had just descended. Those of less certain fate were being borne through into the garrison hall at her right, where the duke's burly infirmarer could be seen further directing their disposition. Even on this bright, spring day, with the last of winter rains now a week past, the ground was churning into a sea of mud, blood, and offal, and the stench borne through on a sea breeze still heavy with smoke, was like a foretaste of hell.

"Only through necessity," said Duke Hammond, beside her. He met her gaze with weary eyes as she looked up at him, mute. "Only as a last resort, my queen."

"Then I must hope I can make it worth the sacrifice." She turned, eyes following the thin line of wounded aiding each other up the steps. "What now? Ravenna's dead. Where can I best serve next?"

"Not here, for now." The Duke followed her gaze and sighed. "Matters are well enough in hand, Your Highness. The castle is secure as far as the second courtyard, and once our armsmen are done sweeping the walls beyond, I believe we may call resistance ended. The sorry business which follows, I and my men know well."

"It would seem to me that I have a responsibility to know it also," she said.

"You already know the worst," said William, at her shoulder. He pressed her arm, and drew her round to face him. "You saw it five days past, when that brave little man died in your arms, and I promise you there is no worse to know, only more, and you have nothing to learn from it."

"When all that has happened has been at my order—"

"And necessary!" he said, "as none has known better, but Snow, this is not your place for now." He bowed his head and drew a breath, pained enough that she reached back to touch his armoured side. "As queen, there is no certainty you will never have to order war again, that we will never need you able to do it. What will best serve us now, is that as soon as possible you stand before us as our queen, and rally us to heal as you have rallied us to fight."

"In other words, princess," said the Huntsman, behind him, "best go find your crown." He dragged his sleeve across his face to wipe away the sweat and blood from the shards of Ravenna's obsidian warriors. "Come on, lass. I'll go with you, just in case of stragglers lurking in the corners."

"You with them also, William, and keep your bow to hand," said the Duke. "There's room enough here for stragglers—though I should fear rooftops before corners, at present."

* * *

"This may not be simple as it seems," Snow White said, as they made their way up through the great hall where the wounded were now gathering, and on into the passage beyond. "It's been ten years. How much may have changed?" She glanced at William, and he shook his head.

"We'll find out," he said. "I don't know either. I wasn't that much older than you, when I was last here—but the old solar was through there, to the right, and straight ahead should take us into the second courtyard." He pulled an arrow forward, set it to his bow and moved on quickly. "Hold back a little while I see if the way is clear."

"But will the the treasury even still be in the same place?" she said. "Ravenna could have changed everything!"

"Prob'ly not," said the Huntsman. He pushed past her with ax in hand, to look down the corridor leading north to the armoury. "It'd be a good secure room, wouldn't it? Aye, and why should she change that?"

"No reason, I hope," she said. She shook her head, and followed him. "In my head, it's all a child's imagining. I can't be sure anything I remember is real!"

Enough was, though, she realized, as they came out into the long gallery overlooking the second courtyard. That had in her memory been the public heart of the castle, and in the instant, glowing in the morning sunshine, it seemed unchanged.

At its landward end, its broad arc hosted the bakehouse, brewery, and the kitchens that served the servants' dining hall and that for the garrison quartered at its opposing end, near the barred gates to the stables in the first courtyard. The kitchens stood nearest the well and the largest of the great cisterns securing the castle's water, and were supplied from the storerooms and granary beside them, through the south entrance from the forecourt. Between the two, facing the gallery, had been the great span of public offices and court of justice and the library. Except for the library these had been mostly mysterious, to a small girl who had seldom had reason to do more than run through the arches cut beneath them, flanking the wide steps leading up to the court, and into the cloister walk that circled the third courtyard. There, in the garden below the royal apartments and those for the castellan's and chancellor's families, had been the heart of her world.

"Who's been castellan, all these years past?" she asked. "It was your father, William—"

"Before he was Duke, yes," he said. He held out his hand. "Wait, I need to see that the walk along the sea wall is clear." A swift glance right, then left. "I don't think even I could get up to the cistern roof, but from the top of the wall an archer could fire in almost as well as out. But safe again, I think."

"After, it was Ravenna's brother," said the Huntsman. "That slimy villain, Finn. When I first came back from the wars, I dealt with him by times, as one of the huntsmen who served the castle's need."

"I'm happy to need another, then." Snow White eyed him, reading something unsaid in the set of his jaw. "Do you remember where he did his business?"

"In the courtyard, for the likes of me. But," pointing across to the smaller doors at the left of the main chancellory gate, "he did come out to us from over there."

"Good enough," said William. "That would be right!" Another sweeping look around, and he tugged her toward the steps, the Huntsman following them this time, as they hastened towards the archway sheltering that entrance. "I know," he said, as they leaned together into the heavy panel, "you dread finding keys in so great a pile, but I think we'll find more order within, than you expect." He drew her in lightly towards the shadows behind the door, and they stood looking round in the twilit hall. "All we need now is the room my father used. He had a cabinet there for all of them, and likely it will still be in use."

* * *

"Oh, this is wrong," she said, appalled, when she saw the treasury. It was the same solid room she had seen more than once before state occasions, when her father had allowed her to come with him to select the jewels she or her mother would wear, but the walls were now lined higher with the heavy chests used by the tax gatherers, than ever she remembered as a girl. They had stood to her shoulders then, in no more than single or doubled ranks against the walls, or perhaps higher, in the last rank against the back of the chamber. Now they stood in doubled ranks against both walls, higher than her head as a woman, and a lower, double row filled the most of the centre of the room.

She moved forward as in dream, into the dusty light from from the small, barred windows near the roof, outlining the stacked chests. Seeing no locks, she stopped before the nearest in the lowest rank, and spun the circular latch to open it. Gold. A second. Gold. A third the same, and that was not as she remembered, either. Memory spoke of silver in this room, far more than gold.

"What has that woman done?!" She slammed down the lids and turned on the men following her. "Never—never!—in my father's time, this room never stood so full!"

"Ten years, Snow," said William. "She has ravaged the land. Taxed without mercy, and robbed where she chose."

"Then we shall see it restored," she said. "This is beyond reason!"

"And it'll all keep for now," said the Huntsman. "You're looking for a crown, if I remember?"

"Behind you." She pointed to the deep armoire set against the wall. "They should be there, along with the rest of the state jewels." He pulled at the door, and she pulled the great iron ring of keys from around her wrist, to search for the smaller brass key that fit its lock. She found it, stepped forward, and held it out, hands shaking. "Open it, will you? It's my father's crown I need, here, and right now I hardly know whether I fear more to see it, or not!"

He took the ring from her, carrying her hand for a second in his, before drawing the key up to look at it. Turned it to set in the lock, and released her to do it. "Aye, well, princess, I shouldn't worry. I fancy we should be able to make do with anything that doesn't fall past your ears when you put it on. . ."

He glanced back, on the face of it quizzical, but with the spark of a smile lighting as she instinctively drew herself up. A smile that broke in a grin as he turned away, and she realized: _oh, now that was meant_. Then, that between the calm in hands and voice, and the provocation in the words, she had steadied.

"Just as long as it's nothing of Ravenna's," he continued thoughtfully. He pulled the cabinet open. "Beyond their mostly being ugly things, I've yet to see any crown of hers that you wouldn't look a right fool in."

"No fear," she said, coming to stand beside him, and pointing to the shadowed top shelf. "and no need. There it is, and my mother's, and—" taking in the two rows of tiaras below it, she stepped back with a grimace. "Ew, you're right. They're all spikes and black iron!"

"Are those silver rat skulls?" William asked, behind her.

"That has a net of either silver twigs or bones—"

"And those are chin chains, too." This time the Huntsman's grin took in both her and William. "I got to see that one up close, and it was right silly. Or would have been, if the woman wearing it weren't so vicious."

"Enough!" she said, raising her hands. "Just lock it all up again, and I'll face it tomorrow! My father's crown in the morning, and the rest of it, I swear I'll have melted for scrap by Sunday!"

"In the meantime," she continued, taking back the keys when he held them out to her, "we've one more thing to attend to here." She held out her hand. "Huntsman, where's your purse?"

For an instant he stared at her, surprised, then rocked back and stepped away, regarding her uncomfortably.

"Aw, no!" he said. "Princess, there's no need for that! You don't owe me anything!" He shifted, looked away and then back, in plain distress. "I mean, Your Highness, there's just so many ways it went all wrong!—that I went all wrong with it! " He stepped back quickly as she closed on him, and ducked his head to avoid her glare. "I mean, it's no' like I even managed to get you to 'Ammond's alive! "

"Well even if you don't think you did, you must have done, for I live now! Stop trying to distract me, we had a deal!" She glared at him, chin raised. "I gave you my word, and I will not have the first act of my reign be to break or deny it, and do not think you will cross me in this!" She thrust out her hand flat and rigid, palm up. "Purse, Huntsman!"

"Dear God, have you always been like this, or is it just the damn armour?"

William grinned. "An' you give her the moral high ground, Huntsman, you are lost." He let the grin widen as the Huntsman gave him a dubious scowl, then set down his ax and fumbled in the pocket of his long coat. "Best course is simply to do as you're bid, as quick as you may."

"Aye, I might've guessed, if I'd not been so stunned," muttered the other, giving up on his coat and digging with a grimace into his trousers pocket. "Soon's I saw that troll runnin' for it."

"Stop stalling!" said Snow White. "And one more thing, Huntsman—" She stopped, her expression softening.

"What?!" Teeth set, the Huntsman pulled out the small leather bag and slapped it into her hand.

"What _is_ your name?"

"Eric." He stared at her. "It's Eric. Your Highness."

"Then, Eric, call me Snow." She sighed. "As William does—and I would have you continue, William."

"Ever as you wish." William said. She nodded, shot him a grateful glance, and began to work at the thong holding the purse shut.

"By tomorrow night, you may be the last two men in my kingdom who will know me as ever other than Your Highness, or Majesty, and I find I am unwilling to give that up so—" she cut off. "Eric, why is the side of this thing so squishy?"

"That would be blood," he said. He caught it quickly back from her fingers, had the thong loosed with a brisk pull, and handed it back. "You don't imagine my antics this morning would've made no difference, would you?"

"To what?" She stared at him, threw the ring of keys back over her wrist, and caught his arm. "Eric, I know you had a cut of some sort at your shoulder the day we met, but if that were bleeding all the way down your side, I doubt you'd be standing!"

"It's not that!" He sighed and regarded her in exasperation. "That wasn't my shoulder bleeding, princess, that was my chest, from where the horse kicked me, and twelve days ago, and a longer story than I'm gettin' into, neither of us need it!"

"Then what, and when?!" She tightened her grip on his wrist, and he pulled back. "We need you seen by a surgeon, and quickly!"

"The hell you don't, princess—not as I am still standing!" He twisted his arm free of her and glared. "There's enough men paraded into that great hall of yours, and down in the garrison barracks, who aren't, and it's with them that the Duke's infirmarer and surgeons must take their time first! Those who hang between life and death, and there's anything can be done to save their lives, they come before any of us who only bleed a bit."

"He's right," said William. "It's part of that sorry business, Snow, that my father would have spared you." He studied Eric sideways. "Though not knowing you were hurt, I'll admit I'm curious. How bad is this?"

"No' much." Eric sighed, rolled his eyes, and waved a hand dismissively. "Finn scratched me in the side a hand's breadth or so, before I killed him. I had that and the gouge on my chest all bound up by your father's infirmarer the night before last, so it's fine, it'll all do. It's just everything's pulled open again, doing this morning's business."

"Ahhh," said William. His tone was noncommittal, but his look hinted understanding enough to earn him a warning scowl from Eric.

"And yes, I'll be aye sore tomorrow!" He turned again to her. "So all right! If you'd care to be gettin' on wi' this matter, Your Highness, we can be done and I can go see about gettin' cleaned up of this mess, and you and young William here can go get yourself pried out of that plate steel of yours."

"And we shall see about tending to you as a part of it," she said under her breath, and turned away to the last open chest. "Don't imagine I'm done with you, Huntsman, we've come too far for that."

* * *

"Next thing after, Snow," said William, as they came out again into the sunlight, "I think we must find whether there are any women alive here, to attend you. I'd prefer not to have any of Ravenna's maids close—if she had any—but the sooner we can find any reasonable company for you, the better."

"From all I've been hearing, I don't know what women Ravenna will have been willing to have near—oh!" Snow White raised a hand to her lips. "Oh, my God, William! Greta!"

"Who?"

"In the north tower!" She caught at his arm. "A girl who was brought in the day I escaped, and Ravenna—I don't know what she did to her, except it aged her terribly, but she was still alive when I escaped! There may be others, too—she said all the girls in her village were taken. Come on! We must find out!"

"All right!" William caught her hand back. "We'll find out!" He glanced back at the Huntsman. "Are you coming, Eric?"

"No," he said, and pointed down the courtyard. "You'll do better to tend to the maids. I see Beith and the rest of his wee hedge-pigs makin' a parade down past the well, and I'm thinkin' someone will have told them where to find the bath-house by now. The sooner we've all done business there, the happier everyone's likely to be." He waved at Snow White cheerfully. "Go on, now, princess, it's fine, we can all be seeing you later."


	2. Near Mid-day, 'Midst Laundry

Fact of the matter might be, Eric considered, that with money in hand his best course would be to make for the gates of the castle at once. Following the princess and young William down from Ravenna's tower, it had seemed to him in that instant he first saw that open gate, that now might be the time to simply to make his way through the crowd and be gone. No trouble at all. Once the others had turned their backs, he need only pass down the steps and be out in the bright spring sunshine, on his way back up the ridge onto the road leading into town.

Instead, he'd spoken up as he had, and the rest had followed.

He might even yet have managed it on separating from them at the treasury doors: cut back across the yard toward Beith and his men, traded an insult or two in passing, then been out through the gates past the granary at the south end of this court, and on through to freedom again.

Instead, this time he'd given way before the promise of an opportunity to get cleaned up first. With, beyond it, the chances of a meal later, and the possibility of having the gash in his side dressed again, by anyone better able to get to it than himself. For preference no one Her Highness might be having words with, before or after. She might be rattling a little, facing her future as queen, but whether he called her dead or spellbound, there was an edge to her since her miraculous rising, that even at a distance he found it a touch less than easy to face, and that edge, with an interest in him, might be harder to dislodge than he liked. Which was, when he thought about it, all the more reason to be careful about choosing his time to leave. Too hasty, and he might end by having difficulty being nonchalant, in the event of her sending anyone after him.

Pulling his coat out flat on one of the worktables that lined the back wall of the laundry, he folded it so as to hide the purse now buried deep in its pocket, and set about rolling it with practiced care into a snug bundle _. Best concealment for that, for now_ , he thought, binding the whole firmly together, and sliding his two smaller axes in under the bindings as well. His companions being certain of his having nothing, he could likely trust them to leave that and the rest of his clothes untouched while he was occupied in the bath-house later. A tidy exchange for his keeping an eye on the bundle of towelling that now held their valuables, while they scrubbed themselves in one of the two shallow stone basins that served the the castle laundry. Their clothes and boots were being soaked out and scrubbed by three aged but muscular laundresses working over smaller wooden tubs nearby, while others set out racks near the fire, ready to receive the wet clothes when they were done.

Having rinsed the worst of the mess from his own shoes and gaiters with a bucket of water from the well, there was nothing more to be done with them until the leather dried, but he could spend the time well enough restoring the rest of his gear. Or, at least as much as he could work on comfortably at present. Past the first rush and excitement of battle, he was beginning to feel the strain of the morning's work. With his earlier wounds stiffening, it had already been uncomfortable enough getting free of his leather jerkin, and unbuckling the bracers from his arms. The latter, had he left them much longer, promised to have been a deal harder to free on his good side, working from the injured one.

Taking up one of the rags given him, along with his jerkin and the saddle soap from his pouch of leather cleaning kit, he went to sit on the broad edge of the washing basin, soaked and wrung out the rag, and began sponging the worst of the bloodstains from its inner side. Those removed, working in the soap before the whole works had dried stiff would be the thing he'd most regret later, if he were to neglect it now.

He glanced up as another burly laundress pushed past him, thumping a basket of washing onto the next table from where he'd left his gear, then swung back to study him suspiciously.

"Eh! I know you, don't I?" she said. "It's Eric Huntsman, isn't it?"

He returned her look in mild surprise. "So some've called me, though not so much lately."

"No, as you've spent more these past two years being either mad or drunk, since your Sara died," she said, "and now, y'need not look so grim at me, lad! She was both your wife and my first cousin's daughter's girl, so in a manner of speaking we're related, and I mean you no ill, you understand me?"

"I think so," he said, "but forgive me, I don't know you, I don't think."

"That's because you'll not have seen me since your wedding five years' past, and there's no man in his right mind notices the grannies gossiping in the corners, at such a time." She considered him thoughtfully. "I'm Goody Coyle. I and my man Alfred keep the laundry here, and the bath-house. As that leaves little enough time for doing business in town or tavern after, I'd not be surprised if ye've never seen either of us since."

"Forgive me, I'd as soon not speak of that past. Although," he added, "it may be now there is something to be said. I know now, who murdered my Sara. He came near enough to killing me also, but as he was fool enough to tell me, he's the one now dead."

"Say you so!" She pushed her basket aside and leaned on the edge of the table. "Anyone I'd be knowing?

"That Finn, as was your late queen's brother."

"Or so they claimed." She folded her arms, and stared. "Indeed! Well, y'know, that's not bad news," she said. "He'd always a nasty eye for the girls his men brought through here."

"And more than that it seems, for those who fought him, like my Sara." His jaw set. "From his bragging before I killed him, it seems we can count more than one woman's death against him."

"Then the killing will stop with him." She tilted her head. "That's good. Would this have been about a sennight ago?"

He considered it, nodded. "Six days back."

"Sometime in the morning." He looked up, and she smiled at his expression. "They could hear her crying out from her tower, all the way through the forecourt. Then when she came down again later, her dress was all marked as though she'd been wiggling on the floor, and I'm told she looked older than me."

"Which would be nothing so old, me old girl," said Beith, sliding around in the tub, to lounge on the rim next to Eric. "Now, you say you keep this place, and that raises the question of a wee problem I and my lads will soon be having, that it strikes me you and yours may also be able to help us with."

Goody Coyle drew herself up, and regarded him dubiously. "And what would that be, little man? For if I am 'old girl' to you, laddie," she added, "that's the best you may expect of me!"

Beith grinned. "Forgive me then, Goodwife Coyle! You are clearly a woman of parts, and I would wish to be on good terms with you."

"What is this problem of yours, then?"

"Well, I can tell you that after the morning we've had, getting a soak in your laundry basin is a grand thing," he said, "but the problem arises when we get out of it. Even with the kindness of your ladies soaking the crap off our boots, and having our kit hung to dry by the fire, it'll be most of the day before any of it's fit to wear. So, speaking with you as the mistress of this place, would there be any place about where we might scrounge clean shirts and breeks to be goin' on with, in the meantime?"

"Eh," she said, "enough towels, and we can do ye up like a party of Romans."

"Indeed ye might," he said, "but then picture this lot next getting drunk as Romans at Saturnalia, in celebration of the day's events..."

"An' that's likely to happen, an' they get any chance!" said Eric. He grinned at Beith's dirty look and the brisk one-fingered salute that followed it.

"...an' I promise you," the dwarf continued, "in no more than towel togas, it won't be pretty!"

"Heh," said the old woman, "I'll give you that." She stood forward, rubbed her chin, and looked around her. "A'right, here's an idea for you, as I'm told you are favoured by the princess an' all." She looked to Eric. "You tell me that wretch Finn is dead? You sure?"

"Aye," he said.

"Then we'll raid his store of the linens. Like all the great ones, he keeps shirts and the like to last three months...an' as we just did a Great Wash day here, the week gone, that cupboard's full at the present." She nodded. "Aye, that'll do." She turned, waving to one of the women, and bawled, "Maggie! Come 'ere, I've an errand for ye."

"Fetch me a dozen or so each of shirts and breeks from Lord Finn's linen closet," she told the other, "an' a couple of nightshirts. Then stop in the storeroom on your way back, and bring me my sewing box as well." She favoured the dwarves with a measuring stare. "We'll need a handspan or so off the bottom of each shirt, but that's fine, the trimmings will do for the bandages we'll need later."

"Eh, there's only the seven of us," said Beith. "Or are you planning to outfit yourself and the tallster, here, too?"

"Ergh, no, she's not," said Eric, with a grimace.

"Oh, belike I am," said Goody Coyle. "At least one of those nighties is going to be mine, as fee for my services as seamstress, and the other's my old man's, and if I'm setting up these little reprobates, there's no reason he and you shouldn't have a clean shirt or two into the bargain."

"I'd not be wearing a murderer's clothes! Did you not just hear what I told you?"

"Ye'd not," she said, "except that any good Christian would say ye already do, and there's days when I wonder if there's much to choose between any of you. For all that I'd call Lord Finn a surpassing nasty bit of work," she reached out to pat his cheek lightly. "Good linen remains good linen, lad, and that's enough of your nonsense."

"It's no' nonsense," he said, but subsided under her stare.

"'Tis, though, in these times," she replied. "Not to mention we've still to soak you out of that mess you're wearing, and while I don't doubt you're as much a mess beneath it..." She gave him an appraising look. "I promise you, that you roaming about here shirtless would be far too much distraction even for my old girls." She tapped him briskly on the chest, ignoring his wince, and turned away to pull her basket from the worktable. "You just bear with us, and we shall make all well."

Beith snorted and caught up the soap as Gort laid it on the edge of the tub between them. "Best you do as she tells you, I think, Huntsman. I'd say there goes a woman of fine understanding."

"Second time today I've heard the likes of that from someone." Eric said, under his breath, "and I'd sooner decide for myself, if there's anyone about that doesn't mind!"

* * *

The next shock came when Beith herded them all out of the laundry some while later, him in a fresh shirt and the rest of the dwarves in fresh shirts and breeks and towel togas, and he was hailed by one of the Duke's armsmen, guiding a party of green-clad and veiled fen village women towards the inner court. The whole group was hung about with bags and baskets and chattering apace, but at the sight of him, or more likely his companions in their draperies, they all stopped short, and for a moment were silent.

Then one of taller ladies passed her burden to the girl next to her, and came forward to meet him, holding out her arms. "Huntsman!" She pulled down the red scarf veiling her face, and beamed at him. "Oh, Eric, love, you did it! You got our princess here!" She caught his arms and hugged him at arms-length, not able to catch him more closely past the bundle he carried, then reached up to catch him at the back of the neck, and pulled him down to kiss his cheek. "I knew that you would, that you must!"

"In a manner of speaking," he said. "Anna! How on Earth did you come here so quickly?"

"We followed Hammond's supply train," she said. "When his scouts came through, following the smoke from the village, and told us what was afoot, I and the rest of us with husbands packed up our gear and came after."

"But the rest of you, and your daughter?"

"All safe and well at home," she said. She patted his arm. "It's all well enough, Eric. I know, it looked terrible with all that fire in the night, but only four houses burned of the nine, and only one of the dipping nets over the fish traps. We've all lived, not much the worse for wear, and Lily's fine with her aunties."

"That's good to know." He looked down at the things he held, avoiding her gaze. "I'm sorry! If I'd not left as I did—"

"There'd be nothing different, except more chance of you having been surprised with the rest of us." She gave him a warm little hug about the waist, and rubbed his shoulder affectionately. "But how have you fared? I would hope that gash on your chest is better, but Lord William said you were hurt again, and your colour's not as good as I might wish."

"It's nothin' much." He shifted his bundled clothing to let her check his now freshly bandaged side, and drew in a sharp breath when she immediately pressed a hand over the wound. "I was in a worse fight the day after Her Highness and I ran from your place, and it's been busy times since. But I've mostly had these bound up, last time by the Duke's infirmarer. Just now by the woman who runs the laundry. It turns out she's a great-cousin of sorts, to my late wife."

"It looks solid enough to do for the moment." She straightened, still holding his arm. "I'll find you later, once we've had use of the kitchen a while, and we'll see about adding a comfrey dressing to it. For now, I want to get on and let the princess know we're here, and then most of us will be back in the great hall, to help with the wounded."

"And if you will, Huntsman, and—er, gentlemen," The armsman standing by them raised a hand. "Lord William asked me to say, if I met you, that when you're ready to seek lodging for the night, room has been made for you in the Duke's quarters, in the apartments just to the right of this gateway, off the inner court. They were the Duke's when he was castellan here in his youth, and he has reclaimed them for the time being. We've got a couple of great low truckle-beds pulled out in one chamber for you and yours, Master Beith, and—" looking at Eric, "there will be room enough for you to stay with His Grace's personal guard."

"Ahh, no, I'll not be doing that." Eric flipped a thumb over his shoulder, towards the laundry door. "As I said, Goodwife Coyle here at the laundry turns out to be a relative of my late wife's, and there's no arrangement with her that I'd see it safe to break. But I will be by the great hall later, Anna, so most likely I'll see you there."

"An' for all there may not have been an untrue word in any of that, Huntsman," said Beith, when the party had moved on. "I'd call that a pack of lies worthy of you." He raised an eyebrow. "My question is, now, what's possessing you to bother?"

 


	3. Mid-Day Through Vespers

"Better clean straw in a hayloft, than the bugs in a noble's bed," he told the dwarves in the dining hall later, where Hammond's men had marshalled the castle's kitchen staff to prepare a mid-day meal of oatmeal, ale, and late-season apples held over from the winter's supplies. When he pointed out that his history with the Duke and his men was as dubious as with any of them—and that, they agreed, was bad enough, for all they now claimed willing to let their own bygones be bygones—well, that had answered them well enough to do.

"So what will you be looking to do next?" he asked after, considering the group now slouched about the dining hall's broad hearth. Only Beith and Quert had risked taking places on the bench across the worn plank table from where he sat, at the end of it facing the hearth. The rest had chosen to settle themselves for a kind of picnic on that low platform of warm bricks, both for seating better suited to their short legs, and to take advantage of the heat to finish drying damp hair and boots.

"It'll be whatever our lady wants next," said Gort, leaning back to look up at him.

"Aye," said Beith. "That's where we'll begin, at least."

"And end! That's what Muir says!" Nion put in. "You know he'll want to stick close with the princess—"

"Queen, now!" Duir poked him in the ribs, and the stout dwarf turned to shove him back.

"No' before she's crowned!" he said. "Rightful heir, but she's only crown princess until there's a coronation!"

"She's queen for us, now," said Coll.

"An' we've made her so for all, by this day's work! Duir said. "So no splitting hairs about it!"

"Says the man wi' hardly any to split!"

"Give over, you two," Gort ordered. "Aye, she's queen for us now, as have felt her power and seen her blessed by the Hart, but Nion's right, it's princess she remains to the rest, until she's crowned."

"And it'll be as she wishes, first," Beith said. "I expect Muir will choose to stick close, to keep her strong as we may, in her powers, and that—" glancing at Quert, "well, that'll keep you here, Quert, with your father."

"Aye," said Quert. "Though I might ask, in any case. Y'know there was a library here, once—an' as he and I once spoke, if there might be any chance of my learnin' to read in it, there might be some chance of tracing others of our people, in other lands or times."

"That dream!" Gort sighed and folded his arms. "Eh, well, you might do worse." He gathered up the bowls within reach, and heaved himself to his feet, to set them on the table. "While you and I, Beith, I think we must set about finding out what's become of our land around the mines." He set his hands on the table's edge and continued, directly to Eric.

"No question the queen's men had seized it all, when we made our way out of our new workings, and all that we saw of our villages as we crept past in the night, was wreckage and smoking ruin. Thing is, we never heard anything to say they'd done more with 'em since, past mounting guards to keep people away."

"In that being," said Beith to Eric, "the rest of our dream: that when we look closely at those ruins, we may find any hope at all, that not all the rest of us perished."

"Y'think that's possible?" Eric asked.

"We lived there in our hundreds, once," Beith said. "Near a thousand dwarves I knew of, with mines and tunnels all through those mountains, and our own legends of deeper workings and lost citadels within the stone. Even having seen the evidence, there's no holding off hope that we may not be the last of our kind."

"So you're aiming to go have that look."

"Gort and I, yes, and likely Duir and Coll as well, unless we think they're better left here, to guard the princess." Beith considered the pair, thoughtful. "Then I can't think of anyone better to leave than Nion, to be officious on behalf of all, with anyone else who may matter."

"Well, there is also the matter of our being rewarded for what we've done," said Nion. "I say we still need to talk about that!"

Beith cast him a dirty look. "Ooo, if you're thinkin' of that matter of 'your weight in gold', my lad, you'll have no agreement there." He pushed away his cup and swung round, to slip down from the bench. "Not from me, or Gort here, and certainly not from Muir, or Quert either, so count yourself outnumbered already." He pointed a finger at the other, as Nion stiffened. "Our first reward for what we've done is the freeing of our land and that chance to reclaim who we are, and while I have no doubt Her Highness will see that we're rewarded in some fashion, the beginnings of our honour will be to see that it doesn't extend to a silly price set by a girl we had strung up by the heels when she offered it!"

"Well, that could be an interesting fight." Eric leaned on the table, arms folded, and gave Nion a glance. "You could get your wish yet, no matter what these say."

"What?" Beith swung round to study him. "Has she made some issue of paying you whatever mad price you agreed to, then?"

"She gave it a good try," he said, and gave the dwarf a sassy smile. An' tell you she managed it, an' I'd no choice, facing her? I don't think so.

"Heh," said Gort. "Well, it'd be in her interests, wouldn't it, Beith?" He leaned on the end of the table and wagged a thumb at Eric. "Get him paid off, an' she can be quit of him, can't she?"

Now there, Eric realized, was a thought. Had that been where Her Highness' insistence on seeing her debt paid had come from? At the end of the day, she was royalty. What certainty then, might he have, that even as a child, she wouldn't have been taught to pursue the fairest argument towards any purpose, however far that might be from her only motive? It wouldn't have been his first thought, that she'd any such gift for subterfuge, but pride had him pushed back and talking, before he could think that one through.

"She's already quit of me!" he said. "On my side of it!—an' has been since we got to Hammond's, and as I told her, owed me nothin' for that, after all the ways that everything about it went wrong."

The whole group pulled up straighter at that, and Beith stared at him outright. "Did you indeed! And just how, may I ask, did she take it?"

"We yelled at each other a little, and as I see it now, I'm a free man."

"Did she say so?"

"No' exactly," he said, and let his gaze slip.

"Then what, exactly, did she say?" When he looked back, Beith's dark eyes drilled into his, and he was reminded in the moment, of his father. "You'll not have me believe either that she'll have cried done with you, or you with her."

"She didn't," he said. "She said not to imagine her done with me, before we parted company—but as I fancy she's about to become the busiest young woman in the country, I'm not about to hold my breath waiting on imaginings. Hers, or mine."

Beith only waited, his expression bleak, and he pushed on, with a small knot tightening in his insides. "The fact of it is, Beith, there's nothing whatever she owes me at this point! No sensible use for her to make of me, in anything that lies before her now."

"You think so?"

"I know so," he said, as flat as he could. "She's back where she belongs, now, an' my part in bringing her here is done. Done a good week ago, if I'm honest about it."

"You'd see no point in sticking close a while, then?"

"To do what?"

"Perhaps no more than ease her mind," Beith replied. "You may say she's back where she belongs, Huntsman, but it's been a long time since the people she'll be with are any she's known."

"She knows the Duke and Lord William well enough, and Sir Thomas, I think."

"It's you and we she's closer to now, Huntsman, on the strength of a fortnight's freedom, and whether either of you would put so many words to it, you've been most of life and safety to her in that time."

"Aye," he said, looking down again. "Nothing much of a life and no safety to speak of!" He turned again to meet the other's gaze. "Don't be stupid with me, Beith. I can't think of anyone we've met in the time, who's been able to take any hand in the care of her, and hasn't made a better job of it than I have."

"You're still the one she's kept looking to hand her across the rough patches." The dwarf sighed and ran a finger along the grain in the worn plank table. "I'd say she faces a rougher patch now, than any yet. But if you don't see it, I'll not argue the case. I'll only ask what better you have to do."

"I don't know yet," he said. "Go home, perhaps."

Which, indeed, now seemed to be a thought he could bear. The croft cottage that had once been his parents' and later his own and Sara's together, if it still stood, might now be no worse than a place he'd not been since before this last winter.

"As damned a fool as ever," Gort muttered.

"That's your opinion, an' you're welcome to it!" he said, "But speaking of fools, I think you lot need to be careful. However kindly our new queen regards you, I shouldn't trust that as time goes on, she or any other will have any clue what to do with you, either, past dressin' you up as fine courtiers, an' callin' you collected to amuse her.

"I've seen that be the fate of other little folk, in my travels as a soldier—and no, Quert, I'm not thinkin' of your kind, only the small ones among men—and forgive me, but I can't think it fitting for any of you."

Well, that, they had assured him, would not happen, until the Duke's secretary had tracked them down shortly after the noon bells rang. This was to advise that as a first step in repaying them for their service that morning, there had been a party of seamstresses summoned in from the town, and commissioned, with reference to their old clothes still drying, to begin measuring and recutting new suits for them from the finest that could be gathered from about the castle. Court clothes, fit for the coronation now to be held the next day. The country's Archbishop having arrived from his seat a day's ride to the south, with a party of monks and other religious, it had been decided within the hour after his arrival, that by noon the next day, they should see the princess crowned in the great chapel beside the hall above. Therefore, it would be appreciated if they might present themselves in the Duke's quarters by the None bell, to have a first fitting of their new clothes. They had all looked a bit askance at that, and sworn at him for laughing.

Not long after, when old Muir arrived in the dining hall among the passengers from the last of the Duke's supply trains, he climbed to his feet and made off with a wave and a smile brighter than his mood. The ancient dwarf's faith in his blind view of things had been one of his two better reasons for avoiding the entire party after their arrival at Hammond's two days previous, bearing Snow White's body. After a hellish day and night climbing down a mountainside, with Muir's insistence that her murder could not be dinning relentless in his ears, when there could be no doubt in his mind that it was, and his own misery at it more than he could stand, he had had no stomach for any more of it, once they'd done bearing her to her Duke as promised. Then later, after the wonder of her rising—still in no way sufficiently explained, to his mind—well, as he'd guessed, Muir's radiant certainty that Tabor must now be destined to enter upon a new Golden Age was every bit as trying as he might have feared.

What chilled him, now, was how completely the rest of the band seemed to share it. Well beyond his son Quert's devout "Yes, father," to every prophetic utterance the old man laid forth, the rest of them also seemed to take it as unquestioned now, that all the ills of the kingdom must fall before the power bound in Snow White's nature, as heir to it.

None of it altered the fact, so far as he could see, that however tough and spirited she might be, she was still little more than a girl, and not a very big one, at that.

Restless, he made his way back up through the gallery to the great hall, to see if Anna or her companions had found their way there yet. Finding none he recognized among the gathering of layfolk and religious come in the Archbishop's train, who seemed to have taken over the care of the wounded there, he would have retreated further to the passage between hall and great chapel, but that now was swarming with more monks, apparently leading an attack with ladders, brooms, and buckets, upon the chapel proper.

"D'ye think all that can be cleared in a day?" he asked a small, monkish scribe directing assault parties with billhooks in to one side and the other, to cut down the dead vines that wrapped the columns lining the central aisle, and veiled the high windows.

"Oh, aye," said the other. "We'll be scrubbing the floor by torchlight, but God willing, the worst of this will be cleared before sunset." He caught Eric's arm and pulled him aside, to make way for the manoeuvring of two men with a tall ladder.

"It's a relief, on the whole," he continued, as a party of women with baskets followed them. "When we set out from the abbey yesterday morning, we'd no way of knowing whether any part of this would be to celebrate a new monarch, or only do what we might to minister to any survivors of the battle promised. That and hope the fact of our coming would not lead to our own condemnation as traitors."

"Still, it's a big job to be takin' on, in a short time," Eric said. "I'd have thought it would take a good month or two, just to get everybody together for it."

"Ah, well, it would," said the scribe. "But both the princess an' Lord Hammond would have the thing done as soon as may be, and as circumstances have already brought most of those lords together, who will owe her fealty as queen, there's a lot to be said for having the matter settled swift and simple." He looked up at Eric, then, brown eyes bright in a narrow brown face. "It'll be easier for her to know her loyal subjects under these conditions, as those who've risked the most to follow her banner—and fact is, it has been too long since this land had any ruler with any heart for it."

"Aye," he said, and fell silent.

"Also as well to let greater celebration wait until we've more to celebrate," the other had continued, and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Say until Michaelmas, or perhaps Her Highness' birthday, which as I recall, is three weeks before then. By then we shall have seen the summer through, and God willing have a good harvest in, and time to marshall such aid for those in worst plight in this kingdom, as shall allow all to face next winter with less dread."

"Her birthday—how old is she, then?"

"Eighteen, coming on nineteen."

"Only that?" No wonder he'd never remembered her. She'd have been no more than eight, and he already well on to a rowdy sixteen, his parents' grief and most of a year on the road to making his fortune as a soldier, by the time she'd been locked up.

The monk folded his arms. "Eh, it's old enough to rule in her own right, and four or five years past being of age to marry. That'll no doubt be the next matter to plan for her."

"An' after that no doubt her children, an' the rest of her life altogether." He had stared down at his companion, that knot re-tying itself in his stomach, and knowing his expression had gone grim, stepped back. "Well, enough! I'll be off out of your way now."

There was no harm in hoping for better, he considered, but to invest so much in so little as the accession of one young girl to a throne, could not be right. Even accounting her blessed by the White Hart and with all the powers of Fairyland marshalled in her favour, it was still the lords and common folk of this world that she must make her way among. He could wonder, for a moment, if she might at the end of it wish never to have found her way to such a freedom.

No serious thought, there, though, past the moment. He might draw on that comfort of knowing that however dubious his own aid had been, and however dubious his princess might perhaps find herself, regarding her fate, she would at least be more comfortable now, and never so alone again.

The rest of that long afternoon he kept moving, not sure whether it was in search of anything definite, or in flight from something that wasn't.

He saw William at a distance once or twice with the other archers, engaged in the business of retrieving arrows from the beach. At least once, when it had seemed the young man was looking for someone he wasn't finding among his father's men, he made himself scarce for a walk round the outer walls, on the off chance of his being the one sought.

Twice more he passed by the great hall, where he spoke with one or two of Anna's companions, and learned she had ended by remaining with Snow White, helping both to reclaim the queen's apartments for herself and the other women, and preparing for the coronation in the morning. He ended by spending an hour or two among them, helping the less desperately injured make their way about, and as his sense of the place improved, guiding new-come family members in search of missing fathers, sons, and husbands.

By later afternoon, his own discomfort was taking him out more often to sit in the sun on the stairs leading down into the forecourt, to consider again that still-open main gate. With the air clearer now, and fewer armsmen visible, things were falling more into peacetime order. Except for the trebuchet still rolled out by the foot of that stairway, and the carts he now saw bearing away shrouded bodies in the direction of the village—no doubt towards its last small church, to wait on the digging of graves for them—it might only have seemed the usual mess of comings and goings that one might see in any great castle on the heels of any great event. Busy, dirty, and ungodly noisy. The same might also now be said of the garrison end of the second courtyard, which was now taking on the order of a military camp, as it had done in Hammond's forecourt. Nothing that different to any other such fortress.

Until sunset, he might yet make off to the village, but what would be the point in doing? Little enough, it seemed. After most of a fortnight's absence, even if his former landlord might still have kept his room—or more than half remember him, being nearly as hopeless a drunkard as he himself had been—there was no great appeal either in returning there, or risking himself as a boarder at the only tavern nearby that offered rooms. Given he would need the change from most of a gold upon hiring any of those rooms, he'd be ill advised to close his eyes once he took possession of it. And even if he trusted the family croft were still standing, there could be no thought of trekking on there tonight. He might manage it in a half day's walk tomorrow, but it would have to be in daylight, these days. Tonight, as he'd thought already, his safest and warmest bet probably would be to camp out in the loft above the stables.

"Hi! You there! Huntsman!" He looked round to find a short, stocky man with a shiny bald head waving at him from the top of the stairs, and pushed himself to his feet as the stranger trotted down the steps towards him. "Thought it might be you. It is Eric, isn't it?"

"Aye," he said, and the other grinned.

"Thought so!" He thrust out a hand. "I'm Alf Coyle. When my old girl put me onto your being by, I thought best look you out. Have ye found a place for the night, yet?"

Eric smiled and shook the hand offered. "I was thinking, could do worse than the hayloft over the stable."

"Or better!" Alf Coyle beamed and clapped him on the arm. "You just come along with me, then. Between you being a relative of sorts to the wife, and me wanting to know what the hell happened after you got hauled through my bath-house by yon Finn and his bullies the week before last, not above half sober and givin' 'em hell all the way, I think we can find a bed in a warm corner for ye."

"Makin' me more of an honest man in the doing," Eric said. He laughed and let Coyle draw him round. "When the Duke's man caught up with me earlier, I told him I'd made my own arrangements for the night. Then I said your good lady was a relative of sorts, and let him draw his own conclusions."

Coyle chuckled "Then that works out all round. Mind you, I do want to know, this last fortnight, what you know of what's been goin' on."

"Well, I can't promise you the whole story before bedtime, Alf, but I can at least tell you how it started."

He had made a good beginning of it over supper and a pint of ale with the inquisitive Coyle, in a corner of the servants' dining hall. They had been joined by Goody Coyle once the laundry closed at Vespers, and sat on while she and her laundresses had got their dinner, and he had told them about encountering the troll. About it nearly being the end of him, until Snow White had run in between them and screamed at it, and then, it seemed, stared it down with such certainty it would not hurt her, that it recoiled and shambled away.

A memory to smile at, into his pillow: a queen might do worse than start her reign with a such a story told of her.

He had in fact got nearly through his account of their stay with the fen village women, when his mention of having his injuries treated there had minded the goodwife to check her own handiwork on him. When that not over-gentle inspection had made him wince more sharply than she liked, and showed that the gash in his side had been bleeding again, she had ordered an end to his evening. She had hustled both men off to the couple's quarters on the second floor of the tower that rose beside the laundry, and ended nearly enough by helping him to bed herself, in this cosy, canvas-curtained alcove off their main room. Or at least, once she'd got the fire going and given her husband her own brisk account of the day's doings, she'd ordered Coyle to do it, while she set off in search of an extra towel or two, a last bucket of warm water from the laundry, and apparently also Anna. Or anyone else she might find, it seemed, up for the task of setting stitches in his side.

"She's a terror when she gets going," Coyle observed, when the door shut behind her, "but I love her dear." He had then shaken his head, smiling, and gone to the cupboard beside the hearth. Poured out a gill of something from a stoneware jug pulled from its depths, downed it, and poured another which he returned and offered to Eric: a shot of some of the rawest apple brandy he'd ever drunk. "My best advice is to get this inside you. If my old girl happens not to find this woman with the medicines she's looking for, it'll help you sleep without them. Or if she does, it should help take the edge off anything they do to you after."


	4. Past Vespers, Rude Awakenings

The room had gone from fading light to full dark, by the time a hand brushed softly around his shoulder woke him, into the the warm light of a lamp now set on the chest beside the bed. Starting at the touch, he opened his eyes to find Anna perched on a stool beside the bed, smiling as warmly into his face.

"Oh, Anna." He managed a faint smile in return. "'S good to see you."

"I did say I'd catch up with you later." She gave his back an affectionate rub, then brushed his hair back from his face, as his eyes went closed again. "How are you doing?"

"No' so bad, I don't think." Her hand landed square and warm across his forehead, before sweeping back again, comfortably tidying his hair, and he sighed. "I don't think I'm sick. It's just everything's hurting a bit more, an' when I mentioned it to Mistress Coyle, she thought best to go find you."

"And a good thought it was, and so she did. And no, I don't think you're sick, either," she said. "That's not an especially fevered brow. You're more tired than anything else—and as you say, everything's hurting a bit more."

He nodded, and managed to get his eyes open. "Question is, have you any of that green muck left over, for putting in wounds?"

"That green muck that makes them hurt less, and mends them faster?" She grinned. "Comfrey and honey, yes. Knowing you were still out there, love, I made sure of it."

"Thanks." He nestled into the pillow, as she reached into the bag on the floor by her feet. "Nothing's too bad if I don't move," he said drowsily, "but aye, I'm tired enough."

He drew up his knee, pushed his foot back to steady himself, and made to shift to his back, eyes going closed again with a grimace, as the movement pulled at his side. "Can't get that cut on my side to stop opening up, either, an'—" slipped round on his back, he opened his eyes, and froze, staring straight up into Snow White's concerned face. "Oh, my God!—Princess, what are you doing here?!"

"Finding out what became of you," she said. She laid a light hand on his shoulder. "Just lie still, Huntsman! You've no need to be up, for any of this."

"Oh, I think not!" he said, taking in the crowd gathered beyond her.

He grabbed the edge of the bed, hard, and heaved himself up fast, past her hasty attempt to catch him. That pulled at his chest and side too sharply not to cry out at it, and for a breath he hung there gasping and tear-blinded, but hung on. Jaw set, he pushed his hand back to brace himself on his better right side, dragged his left hand roughly across his eyes, and stared round at the company, grim-faced.

Five people, no less. A blond stranger with his arm in a sling, standing an arm's length behind Snow White, the bedroom's canvas curtain pushed back at his shoulder. A plain, slender girl clutching a quilt, at the end of the bed—she fell back a step at his glare, her expression nervous—and that moved at least two of Anna's ladies hovering beyond her, their faces curious. Then Alf Coyle stood beyond Anna, at the clear side of the alcove's door, beaming, and there his wife peered past his shoulder.

"What in God's name is all this about?!" Though that, he might guess.

He pushed his way up to sitting as straight as he could, gathered the bedclothes around his waist and turned to stare up at Snow White. "What kind of parade have you been leading round in search of me?" He swung round to Anna, as she rose. "It was only supposed to be you that Mistress Coyle went looking for!"

When she only raised a silent eyebrow at him, before reaching past him to shake his pillow into shape, he lifted a hand in frustrated appeal and looked ruefully to his host. "Ay, Master Coyle, and Mistress—I'm sorry to be the cause of such a disruption in your house, at such an hour!"

"Oh, don't be sorry to me, son," said Coyle. He folded his arms and surveyed the group cheerfully. "It's no' so late, and so far, this's all been good as a play at the fair!"

"Alf!" hissed his wife, and poked him in the ribs. He blocked her with a practiced grace, chuckling, and Eric gave him a wry smile.

"Aye," he said. "So I'd gather, it's drawn enough of a crowd!"

He braced himself again as Anna dug in behind him, by the feel of it rearranging not only the bed's two rough pillows, but the bundle he'd made of his coat, and ignored the gentle push at his arm which followed. No. Too much in this couldn't be let pass that easily. He turned to look up again, when Snow White's hands fell warm at his back and shoulder.

"So—is this how you imagine it will be from now on, Princess?" She looked puzzled, and he gave her his best hard stare. "Do I now answer to you for my every move, or you'll be leading out the search parties after me? Am I to be one of your pets, like Beith and his lads? Because if so, I'll tell you straight that it'll not do!"

"It's not how I imagine anything!" she said. She stepped round to stare at him, hand sliding around his arm, and sank down on the edge of the bed. "Pets?! For Heaven's sake, Eric, I only wondered where you were!"

When he relaxed a little, she took the hand he'd pulled into his lap and chafed his wrist gently. "When I hadn't seen you past supper-time, and no one else had, either—I knew you were hurt, and I was worried." She raised a swift hand to forestall his comment. "Now, I will grant you the parade, and I'm sorry!—it seems I may have difficulty travelling without one, from now on!—but if it's any comfort, we didn't travel far. Anna knew where you were staying, so we only needed ask where to find Mistress Coyle, and as it happened, she was the first person we met in the courtyard. So be easy, nothing's gone any further."

"That only worked, as I'd got here by then!" He thought to shift his hand to catch hers instead, and did so, lightly as he could. "It's some help. But did no one tell you, that I would not be coming to the Duke's?"

"Only that you wouldn't be staying there." She sighed in something too much like relief and touched his cheek, her palm light against the line of his jaw, and the side of her thumb brushing his cheekbone as softly as a kiss. "I had thought, that I'd at least see you later."

"Uh—huh." And by the care in her tone and the tenderness in the gesture, he might count on the whole castle hearing about that by breakfast. Not nearly as happy a tale to have told of her, as the one about the troll.

He brought his free hand up carefully to draw hers down, and looked down at her hands caught in his, before speaking. Then up, to meet her eyes. "Well, you may have no reason to have noticed, but I'm no' so fond of the Duke—and I doubt not the feeling is mutual. I've also worse history with any number of his men, than you know. I'm sorry if it worried you, but I judged it best all round, that I not be anywhere anyone might make an issue of it."

"Did you not think that history might be set aside, after all you've done?"

He smiled, tight and briefly. "I've done little enough that they've seen. Little enough they've seen, that they've cared for." He grinned then, unforced, at a thought. "You didn't see your Duke's face this morning, did you, when I rode up beside you on the beach?"

"No! I was too busy being terrified, and not knowing what to think, that you were there." Her face lit, and she laughed. "And there you were, flirting with me!"

"Well, it did keep you from throwing up, didn't it?" He let her hand go, when she made to withdraw it. "I know the look of first-battle nerves getting the better of one—" and back came that hand to his face, and she'd leaned in and kissed him. Square and solidly on the cheek, innocent as anyone might wish, and as breathtaking, in being no favour that should pass between a princess to be queen in the morning, and any mere huntsman. No matter how innocent, who would believe it? Who would choose, when even he might wish—or have wished? "—and before God, Princess, do you not realize you should not be doing this?!"

"Not doing what?!"

"Any of this!" He caught her wrist and guided her hand firmly back into her lap. "Searching me out this way! Looking to take care of me, showing yourself this—" Abruptly, he ran out of breath to speak, and bowed his head. "—this fond. It'll no' do!"

"Why not?" She worked her hand free and slipped her arm around him, tilting her head to look into his face. "Eric, you're my friend. Would you expect me not to do any of it?"

"Not yourself! Not now!" He closed his eyes as again breath ran out too soon, beneath the tightness in his chest. "Especially not this! Between you and me, now, the favour's too great."

"What favour? That of my caring about you?" That lightest of embraces tightened. "Oh, Eric, love—"

"An' don't call me your love!" His voice went rough, but he got his head up for it, and she rocked back, startled.

"Look," he said in desperation, letting her go and pushing his hands flat into the bedclothes at each side of him. "I know you mean nothing by it! You're but following Anna, who calls everybody 'love' half as often as their name!—but you've no idea how far from funny this is."

When she no more than straightened and swayed towards him, studying him, he drew in a hard breath and turned his face aside. "Oh, dear God, now I really know how that damn troll felt!"

"Oh dear," she said, her tone distant. "I am never going to hear the end of that troll, am I?"

"It makes a better story than this will!"

But not one he dare fail to see finished now, much less ask any privacy in which to tell her the worst of it. Though in fact he might leave that to others. So he lifted his head and met her gaze, then reached to cup her cheek in his palm, and caught his fingers in her hair in an echo of her own gesture, and waited for that flying, fey look to fall away from her, into sober attention. Into a look that stopped at his eyes, instead of cutting straight through him.

"You'd have no way of knowing! You've had too little time in the world, and half your life locked in one wee room with nobody to teach you anything—but as queen, you need to be damned careful who you're seen to favour, and how far!

"You may do as you like with young William," he said. "He's near enough your station and you've known him from a boy. My guess is the same holds for Beith and his lot too. Nobody's seen their like here in generations, and when they're no' drunk and fighting, they've the old magic in 'em—but I am another matter!

"I'm from here, Princess, and the whole town knows me, and little enough to my credit. As Mistress Coyle may tell you, I was a wild boy run off to be a soldier, who came back so much worse that even I'd be hard put to call it worth anything at all, that I ever came back. I'd have been dead years ago but for my Sara, and in the two years since she was murdered, you'll scarce find anyone to remember me as anything beyond 'mad Eric' or 'yon drunk, Eric', and truth is, you as much as looking kindly at me as you have in this hour—" Not breaking gaze with her, he shook his head. "It'll do neither of us any good.

"You look to make a pet of me now—you look to favour me in any way, past this hour, and you'll be rated a fond fool, and I worse if I stand still for it! Which I'm not inclined to do! and it may be the last scrap of pride I possess, to say I'll not sink to that, with you."

She sighed and considered him, her eyes pained. "Does my word in this count for nothing?"

"As regards me? I wouldn't bet on it." He let her go. "You've a fortnight's experience of me. Would you believe the word of a child who'd known me an hour, against it? A child who might believe as they would, but not, in the end, have understood the right of anything?"

"Or who might, in their innocence, have seen the truth more clearly."

"Only in fairy tales, Princess." He shook his head. "An' be honest: you think back to the man you met twelve days ago. Then you just try to tell me how you don't understand, that they'd be right to question."

"I know better of you, now." But the look in her eyes granted his point, and surrendered to the truth in it as she looked away. Touched his arm, then rose. Turned back, her lips parting as though to say more, and he spoke first.

"We're not the only two people in the world, and even as queen, you can't make the worst of what I've been go away."

"No," said Snow White. She folded her arms, eyes downcast. "I won't pretend to that power."

"Best not. " He pushed forward, sighing, gathered the covers around himself again, and cast a glance at Anna. "An' if we might call that settled, is there any chance we might make this less of a party, an' get you along with patching me up?"

"I think so," she said, and rose.

"Yes!" Snow White glanced back at him, let her arms fall, then waved her companions towards the outer room. "Greta, you and Lisl and Catherine may return to my chambers now. Jeff, would you see them there?"

"Ah. No' so fast." The blond man came away from where he'd gone to lean against the wall. "Lisl and Catherine, perhaps," he said in a mild tone, "but as first of your ladies I think young Greta best stay, and if you, Master Coyle, might do us the favour of seeing the girls off to the new royal apartments, it'd be a help."

Snow White gave him a questioning look, and he sighed. "The trouble is, Your Highness, that Eric here has the right of it. He does have some reputation locally, and one amongst those of us from Hammond's, that isn't easy, either. Makin' a shrewd guess that anything any of us do tonight is likely to live in stories told the rest of our lives—best to keep matters between you two as open as you may.

"If you keep one of your ladies, and my good wife keeps me, and the goodwife here remains as lady of the house, we'll have four honest voices to speak clear as may be needed, to everything about this being sensible and proper, without a word ever needed from you or him, regarding it."

"I see," said Snow White. She matched his stare for a breath, then inclined her head to Coyle. "Then if you'd be willing, sir, to show my two ladies home, it would be a help."

"It'd be my pleasure, Your Highness, to do it!" He made her a bow at which she smiled. Then he stepped aside, beckoning the two women towards the door. "We'll be off then directly, and I shall be back before you know it." He paused, laying a finger alongside his nose, and grinned. "No harm in making it five honest voices, either!"

"No doubt." Her smile tightened enough to say she was seeing how that might be a problem. "I'll hope not to take that long."

"No longer," she said, and spun to face him again, arms folded, once the door had thumped closed, "than it takes to say, that we're not leaving matters at that!"

"Ooo." Eric sighed and pulled up his good hand to rub his eyes. "Aye. Is that the royal we, or the one as in 'you and I', Your Highness?"

"Both!" Now, there was that light, intense edge in her voice, that he knew. One breath past challenge and one short of either insistence or accusation. "Does it not trouble you..." and "No! We have to help them—"

"Then forgive me, but I need to be lyin' down for this."

"Don't let me stop you!" Her gaze didn't waver, but she echoed his sigh and shook her head slightly. "I did tell you, you needn't be up for any of it."

"Aye." Easing his weight off his left arm, he pushed over to his right, and winced. "So you did." No, moving anything through that bad side of his was not about to be a pleasure, after the strain he'd just put on it. "An' I promise you—springin' that many people on me in this small a room, an' mostly in the dark? There was no chance of my not sitting up to count heads!"

"An' figure out which size ax to reach for?" Jeff smiled at his dubious look, and studied him not unkindly. "So, are ye needing some help to get settled again?"

"No." Taking in the other's own unfit state for it, he folded his arm carefully across himself, to trap the bedclothes, and looked down. "I'll make do."

"That ye may," Jeff replied, "but give it a moment, and we may do better for ye." He looked across at Anna. "Go on, lass, you've things to get together wi' the goodwife here, the girls and I can see our lad back to his pillows."

"I said, I'll make do!"

Holding his shoulder as still as he could, Eric pulled around in a careful twist to his right side, and then down, and that was his undoing. A fold in the sheet beneath him, pulled loose on the way up, gave way under his hand as he shifted, and he went down hard enough to drag at every sore muscle from his shoulders to his knees. Hard enough to bow his head with a groan, and hold bracing himself on his good arm against the edge of the bed, a fine sweat breaking across his forehead.

"Eric!" Well, from the sound of that, it'd bought him his princess' sympathy. "Anna—" She looked round for a breath, then came in a rush to fall on her knees beside him, reaching to catch him at hand and shoulder.

"An' let be! " He leaned his forehead into his wrist, and pulled in a breath. "If I can just no' move for a minute—ow!" Even with his arm held close, the movement had still strained the wound on his chest, and the gash across his side was burning fiercely enough now to be frightening. That cut hadn't been that bad, he was sure of it. It'd done well enough for four days now, with no more than a pad of white moss packed into it, and no question it had been healing, but since that last dressing had gone on, this morning, it had begun to feel worse than when new. If anything, worse now than when he'd gone to bed, and that for certain should not be the case.

"Aye," said Jeff, "that's workin' for ye." He sighed and beckoned Greta. "Here, as you're the taller—" With his good hand he swept the quilt from her arm, and sent her with a touch round the end of the bed. "Now, if I might have you take this here, Your Highness, an' make a roll of it lengthwise, here across the end of the bed?" Snow White rose, and he smiled as Eric looked round at him, questioning. "Don't look so worried, lad. Take your time." He continued, to Greta. "We'll let him settle on his own. It's still likely to hurt enough, without ill-timed help from us."

"Aye." Eric looked down, and drew a careful breath. An' you just got the helper more likely to hurt me off rolling up a quilt instead. Well, thinking about it a little, he wouldn't have expected Anna to settle for a stupid man. "Thanks."

"What should I be doing, then?" Greta asked.

"What we shall each be doing," Jeff continued, "is taking a corner of that first pillow—and as you've two good hands, you can hold it square—so that when Eric, here, says he's ready to drop back on it, we shall both pull that front edge up to catch him." He smiled again, when Eric looked at him in puzzlement. "You'll still be sitting up a bit, but I'll promise a good deal more comfortable than if we let you just pin the thing under you."

"Like this?" Greta asked, and Jeff nodded.

"Just so." He laid his hand at Eric's shoulder. "The only thing else I'll ask, is that you not go straight back. Do, and I'll only have to shove you over again, so my girl can get at that hurt in your side."

"No fear." He sighed and tucked his arm tighter to his side again. "That's the one worries me more, an'—all right. I'll say now, when you're ready."

"Aye." Jeff bent to get a grip on the pillow. "When you like."

He gripped the edge of the bed and drew himself down that last few inches, until he could drop back, and the two above him shifted, and he was caught, and held.

"Ohh." Eric leaned back as the edge of the pillow folded under his neck, and closed his eyes in plain relief. Blinked, and looked up to find Greta smiling shyly into his face. "Thanks. Oh, aye, that's better."

"You're welcome." She drew back, her smile carrying in her voice, then bent to sweep his hair out from under the back of his neck and neatly back behind him. "There, that'll be cooler for you." She went on brushing it lightly into order, and he sighed and leaned back on the pillow, closing his eyes.

Oh, Lord, if the day could end right there, it'd be best he could ask. But of course there was no prayer of that, and needed not to be, until he'd had his hurts tended.

"An' now, if we can just have that quilt here, princess, we shall tuck it in the length of him, and have it hold him as safe as a babe in his mother's arms." Jeff stooped to fold the covers neatly around him, a grin momentarily lighting his face when Eric turned on the pillow and made to pull them higher. "Relax, lad, I'm leavin' you modest enough! " And then, before God, the man winked, before turning again to smile at Snow White.

"It's a good trick for making a big lad comfortable," he went on, "when he needs to lie quiet a bit." Snow White gave him a silently thoughtful look, and he grinned. "He's a wee bit too big just to cuddle, after all!"

"One might say," she said. For an instant she met Eric's eyes, and all but laughed at his exasperated look. Then she straightened and fell back a step, hands falling against her skirt, as Jeff set about pressing the quilt in at his back. The man must be left-handed, he realized. He couldn't have been that deft himself, with his better arm lamed.

"You just lean back a little here," Jeff told him, shoving the near end of the coverlet flat under his shoulder. "Then we'll have it in solid at your side, and—" glancing back at Snow White again, "if you just bundle that end in there, to catch him at the knees, he'll be cosy as anyone could wish." He drew back then, as she moved to help. "Then I should say you may carry on giving him whatever hell you like, with no worse worry than that he may go to sleep in the middle of it."


	5. Affection, With Disagreements

"Ah—" For a moment, Snow White stared aside at Jeff, something taken aback. "I don't think I wish to—Jeff, there's no hell he deserves of me!"

"Don't mind him, princess. He's only teasing." Eric shifted, pulling up his knee to ease the pressure where Jeff had shoved the roll of quilting in at his back, and lay back on the pillow with a sigh, as she bent to tuck the end of it in again, to hold him more comfortably. "Or else just hoped to have you say as much, as I'd say you just did."

"Near enough," Jeff said, and smiled faintly, when Eric glanced back at him. "Smart lad. You're doing well, for the shape you're in."

"Oh." Snow White straightened, giving the other as faintly dubious a look, at which Jeff smiled again, then stepped back again by the wall.

Any more of a trap in that, Eric thought, and he'd have had more to say about it. _Did you feel the trick in that invitation, princess?_ Even calling it a well-intended poke at her intentions, as much to gauge her view of him as anything else, and as it seemed, protectively—of _him_ —there was enough manipulation in it to tighten something protective of her, in his insides.

She did look better now, than she had this morning. Not quite the girl he knew from their travels, any longer. Not that she could or should ever be that girl again, after everything. For sure no one would wish her ever so hunted again. In a new tan shift and a blue wool dress that probably came from a chest in an attic, by its cut and close-fit sleeves most likely from her mother's time, she looked now a royal maiden of her proper age, and her bearing was more certain. Less edged and tightly wound, than this morning. But measuring the intentness in her face now, as she looked down, her hair falling loose over her shoulder and her hand rising to push it back, he could see that she had understood something of how she'd just been led. That, and that for all her face set briefly—determined, he guessed, to heed such possibilities better in future—he could still see the girl's uncertainty in her expression and the gesture.

She cast a look then, towards the outer room, where the conference between Goody Coyle and Anna still seemed to be going on at the lamp-lit table by the hearth. Stepped back herself, to circle round the end of the bed, and put out her hand when Greta made to move from between them. "No, Greta, stay. Just take the end of that chest beyond the lamp. There's room."

She turned again, at the scrape of wood across the floor, as Jeff pulled the bench from outside the alcove's door, in by the wall at the other side of the bed, and a sudden smile caught at her lips. "Oh, how my mother would _laugh_ , to see me so thoroughly chaperoned..."

Bending to catch up the stool where Anna had been sitting, she slipped it back next to the bed and sank down on it. Shook out her skirts out around her, then leaned forward, arms resting on her knees and fingers laced.

"You know," she said, "I do know what you're talking about." Pushing back, she folded her arms, and met his eyes steadily. "I won't even disagree. It's all closer than you could know, to things I was taught very young. So I won't pretend, that I don't see how your being seen as my friend could make trouble for both of us, no matter how careful we might be. How it might seem unjust to others, and that be used against both of us."

She let her hands fall, and drew in a breath. "It also changes less than you might think." Briefly, her gaze fell, her expression going remote. Then her lips set softly, and she looked up, and stretched out her hand to lay it warm around his. "At the end of the day, you are my friend, and I am of no mind to deny that fact."

"Then don't. Don't deny anything." As lightly as he could, he drew his hand back, and gave his attention to pulling the bedclothes higher and straighter across his chest, before he risked looking back at her. "Just don't make anything of it, either. It won't help either of us."

"Not good enough." She sighed and shook her head. "Not for either of us, now, Huntsman. We both deserve better."

He froze, watching her, and felt his mouth go dry. "It's _no'_ that simple."

"Eric, you _are_ my friend." She sighed again, more deeply. "You have _been_ my friend. You have guided and protected me, you have borne with me through everything—"

"But I didn't!" He leaned back on the pillow, and pulled up his hand to rub his eyes. "Oh, come on, now, princess—please!—don't start makin' stuff up!" He turned back to look at her, and his voice went rough. "Damn it, don't start makin' me your hero, when I'm not!"

"If you aren't—" Unexpectedly, she smiled at his distress. "Then I'm not sure what I should call you."

"Try the man your worst enemy hired to hunt you down!" He reached out to her, and she caught his hand again, leaning in to cradle it against her wrist. "Princess, I took on hunting you as a _job_ , for the worst of reasons, and stupid with hope even my Sara would have cursed me for conceiving."

"I know." For a breath she looked down. "I know, and I wish you might never speak of it again."

"Don't shame yourself by making that your word. Truth won't change for wishing."

"I don't! And I won't." When she met his eyes again, her expression was both pained, and stubborn. "It's your truth, Huntsman, speak of it as you will. But don't look to shame yourself with it, either. Not in my eyes, you don't deserve it. Not for your care of me after. Or at least tell the rest of the story, too—that I soon knew, and just as soon forgave you."

"I think you may be easier with that," he said, "than I am."

He drew back again, reaching right-handed to pull his left arm more solidly away from his side, and looked down.

"Fact is, Your Highness, that any time that week we were in the forest, on top of that bloody ridiculous deal we'd made, I wasn't treatin' you at all well—an' I can't think of anyone we've met in the whole time, to have taken any hand in lookin' after you, and not made a better job of it than I.

"I mean," he went on, giving her another sideways look, "Do you not _remember_ that whole first five or six days of it? You edgin' round me like you knew not what to make of that great, rude, grubby creature who was scarcely darin' trust you within arm's reach followin' him—"

"—despite being twice my size!" She folded her arms again, regarding him in plain amusement, and against all better judgement, he smiled.

"Well, there was that business of you smacking me, and takin' my knife! Though it was mostly a matter of me either being too damn drunk to be polite, or else doin' my best to pretend you weren't there, because I'd no more idea what to make of you, either."

"Except when you'd no choice but to notice," she said, "because the wind had shifted, and you found yourself downwind of me, still reeking of everything I'd gone swimming in, from the castle sewers forward!" She gave a faint splutter of laughter. "My problem being, that matters really weren't any better, the other way around."

"No wonder you wouldn't tell me who you were, either," he said, "after I made you that speech about all royalty being damned."

"No." Her expression sobered. "That was troubling enough. Do you still feel that way about it?"

"Truth?" He nodded. "Truth is, princess, pretty much yes. Though I'd make a couple of exceptions now, for you and young William."

"I wouldn't ask more." She held his gaze. "But whatever your doubts, whatever your misgivings, you still bore with me. You kept me alive, and sane in that insane place."

"I'd no' be alive but for you, either."

She smiled, faint and warm. "Thank you, for not mentioning the troll."

"I'm not only talking about the troll." She tilted her head, questioning, and he went on. "Let's not forget Beith an' his lads havin' me up by the heels, with the only question being whether they'd leave me there alive or not, until you panicked them out of it."

"I had, you know." Her smile widened. "Being in a complete panic myself."

"Or this morning, for that matter. If you hadn't got that knife under our late queen's ribs when you did—"

" _Your_ knife, Eric."

"—those black glass warriors of hers would have cut us all to bits. That was a damn good shield I was hidin' behind, but with the rain of them against it, those edges were goin' to _lace_."

He sighed. "On the whole, you've done a good bit better protecting me, than I you."

"Except that I wouldn't have survived to do any of it, without you." She studied him a moment. "And as far as treating me well was concerned—I wouldn't say you treated yourself any better."

"I did also try to get out of it, once I knew who you were!"

"I know." Her voice edged, lightly. "Trying to protect me then, too. You know, if there's a point you're trying to make here, against yourself, you're not doing well with it."

"Eric." At the foot of the bed Anna nudged Jeff somewhat aside from where he had settled on the bench, and came to lay a towel laden with cloth-wrapped bundles on the bed next to him. "You should know, I told her what you said when you left her with us."

He stared up at her, dismayed. "Oh, no. An' just how much did you remember me sayin'?"

"Ooo," murmured Jeff, from the shadows. "You _have_ been married, haven't you?"

" _Tact_ , thou!" Turning to take a small basin held out to her by Goody Coyle, Anna reached to give her husband a casual swat on his good arm as she swung past to set it on the floor beside the bed.

She then raised an eyebrow at Eric. "I asked how you could desert her, now you knew the truth, and you replied 'I think I know the truth. Anything I ever cared about was taken away from me. All this time—aye, she's safer here with you.'"

She settled herself beside him and reached to undo the knot in the bandage at his shoulder.

"Your reasoning seemed a bit muddled, but after the way you'd been moping about all afternoon, stewing yourself into the state you had—" She flicked her finger against his cheek, hard enough to make him flinch. "Turn. I don't need your attention for this, and I'd as soon not have it." Glancing then, at Snow White. "Would you just slide over a little and hold his arm where it is?"

Eric twisted as best he could to look round at her. "You'd not just tell me to keep still?" He pulled his good arm aside as Snow White slipped to one knee beside the bed, and laid her arm around him in what he realized at once might have been much less of a sheltering hug, if he'd had the sense to stay as he was. "Anna, this needs no encouraging!"

"Shh. Oh, Eric, stop fussing." Snow White caught his hand, let go his arm, and leaned forward to cup his cheek in her palm, making him turn. "Look at me."

"I don't quite see why you're trying," she continued, when he faced her, "but you are _not_ going to distract me. Certainly not into denying you as my friend." She drew back, laying her arm around him again, squeezed his fingers, and smiled, faint but clear. "I could say, dearest Huntsman, consider yourself caught.

"Yes, you did try to leave once you knew who I was—but not through wishing me any harm, or out of any fear for yourself. You left because you were afraid I'd be in worse danger with you than without you."

"Near enough." He leaned back into the pillow, and sighed. "I've no record at all, princess, for ever managin' to take care of anythin' or anyone that's mattered. You were a risk beyond my limits for it."

"Yet I'd hardly have thought so," she said. "When you knew you were wrong about it, you came back. You found me, you fought for me, you killed that man who would have taken me—"

"Three men," said Anna, now exploring the dressing stuck to his chest.

She looked up when they both looked at her. "That's how many we buried with ax wounds. The fourth had an arrow in him, which I've still no way to explain."

"Probably William," Snow White said.

" _Which_ prevented their torching more than half the village, as well as giving all of us time to get away in our boats." Anna pushed herself back. "In short, Eric, you're most of the reason none of us came to harm that night, and we still had half our homes to return to in the morning."

" _And_ you got us both away, and well upriver towards the mountains, by morning."

"Oh, aye." He glanced at Snow White. "Except that as you said, we should never have been there. If I'd been headed straighter for Hammond's, we wouldn't have been.

"Or," looking back at Anna, "if I'd ever thought to cover our tracks at all, it might none of it have happened."

"You think so?" She stooped to soak a cloth in her basin of water, wrung it out lightly, and came back to fold it around the stuck dressing. "As near that old road out of the Dark Forest, as we lie? They'd have come to us sooner or later, and I doubt any measure of innocence would have protected us."

"An' nothin' would have protected you, wife, if these two hadn't left runnin'!'" Jeff commented behind her. "Or if any of those men had ever come back," He raised his voice. "As I happen to agree with you, Eric—about both points you make, you understand—I'll need to hear you were responsible for that not happening as well, before being anywhere near as grateful as she is!"

"'Responsible' would be too much to say," Eric said. He closed his eyes and pulled up his free hand to grip the end of the pillow, tensing as Anna dug into the knots holding the bandage round his side. "But I did help with it."

"More than 'help'!" Letting go his hand, Snow White gripped the edge of the bed and pulled herself closer. Ignoring his startled look, she leaned in to slip her arm further around him, before she turned. "When we were attacked the next morning, he sent me running, then stood to face the man who most wanted me, and killed him."

"Now, that would ha' been Finn, the queen's brother," Goody Coyle contributed in a gleeful whisper, and he winced, as the bench creaked with what could only be her turning aside to add the rest of the story in Jeff's ear. _That would be the one we now know murdered our Sara—his wife, and my first cousin's daughter's girl._ Oh, trust the grannies gossiping in the corners, she'd see that history kept straight, and her own place in it, too.

"A fair start," Jeff acknowledged. "What happened to the rest?"

"Lord William, mostly." Eric caught Snow White's hand before she could take his again, and gave it a quick, quieting squeeze. "He was one of the four who followed us from your village. When the moment came, he turned coat and took the man nearest him senseless off his horse. Beith or Gort finished that one, I think. Then he shot the last of them, later."

He included Anna in the look he turned to the other, and she too shifted to look behind her, her hand going still on his side. "They were all buried before we left. Y'need not fear they'll be back."

"Then I'll thank you now, and Lord William and the others later, and we may all sleep easier," said Jeff. "And you, Anna, my girl, may just stop givin' me that look! You know right well we couldn't hope for any of ours to be safe, with the likes of those running loose."

"And if any still were, it would still be his first task to keep her from them," Anna retorted, "and that's enough to burden any man." She began to work at the next knot. "Any danger left for us, must have remained ours, Eric, and do not allow the likes of my man to charge you with it."

"Oh, I'd no' dream of it," he said. He turned aside with a sigh, closed his eyes, and tightened his grip on the pillow. _"_ Fact is, you'd need a better man for any of it. _"_


	6. But Even Heroes Wear Down, Eventually...

"Now there," said Anna, "is fatigue talking."

She shook her head, then bent again to her task, and Eric winced as she shifted her grip and the bandages tightened again against his side.

"No," he said, "it isn't. Not that I'm no' tired, but I'm not wrong about this, either."

"Oh, Eric." Snow White snugged her arm closer around him, and he felt her sigh when he no more than turned a little further into the pillow. "All right, sh." She slid her free hand under his wrist, steadying the damp compress still soaking the dressing at his chest, then squeezed his arm, reassuring. "That's enough. I think it's time for you and I to just let Anna get on with what she's doing, while you rest as best you can, and we leave the rest of this for morning."

"No." He let go the pillow, and turned his arm so that he could lay his hand against her shoulder, before looking up at her. "There's no 'morning' for you and I. Anything between us, we need settled now."

"It's what I told you, when I first knew who you were," he said. "That if I'd known, I could only ever have called the business of keepin' you safe too difficult a task, an' so it's proved. If there's any one man could do it, it's not me!—an' I need, now, to be free of you or anyone else ever chargin' me with it again, as surely as you now need to be quit of me."

She looked down at his hand as he let it slip to block her arm, then met his gaze again, her expression tender.

"Does it help, if I don't charge you with any of it?"

"No." He shook his head slightly. "We're not the only two people in the world, to care or judge what's right, and have opinions that matter. "

"You being one of them."

He nodded. "I don't think that differently to any other man, Princess. I'm just clearer than most about my limits."

"Limits I hardly think I've seen," she said.

"You weren't there for me hitting them!" He closed his eyes and turned aside further into the pillow, pulling his hand up again to grip the end of it. "That would be my point—it'd be too late, you wouldn't be!" He fought down a breath, as she leaned in to hold him closer. "As I said—I've never been able to protect anyone or anythin' that's ever mattered, or that I've ever cared about, an' I already know you're no exception!"

"How am I not?!" She braced herself more solidly beside him. "Eric, for Heaven's sake—I am alive, at the end of it all!"

"That's no' a fact I'd take any credit for!"

He really couldn't turn any further to the pillow, and still be able to breathe, so he turned restlessly away. Inspired, let his arm slip as he did, so that she had to loosen her grip on him.

"Past the little I've done for you that's been of any use," he said, turning again to look at her, "—call it the business of getting both of us away through the Dark Forest, and then again draggin' you off upriver from the fenlands that night—past that, Princess, we were _done_ a week ago.

"From the time the dwarves set on us the next morning, an' a lot of good I was to you there—not!—I swear, if it'd not been for everyone else, you'd have been taken within the day, two or three times at least! In the matter of killing Finn, I came within a hair's breadth of being no use to either of us, an' from then on, past findin' the path to Duke Hammond's castle, I'd be hard put to see any way I didn't end up failing you in every way that mattered!"

"But you didn't! How on Earth can you say that?" She brought her hand to cover his, fingers sliding into his palm. "As regards the dwarves setting on us—"

"I should have been paying attention! I should at least have thought to be keeping my ax to hand! If I had, they'd never have so much as poked out their noses at us!"

"We'd been running half the night, by then! You were at least as cold and wet and tired as I was, and neither of us had any reason to expect them there!"

"I should still have been paying attention!"

"Oh, that's reasonable," she muttered. "Opinion, not argument. Besides, if they hadn't caught us then, we wouldn't have had anywhere to hide later, when we were overtaken."

"Proving my point, that if not for everyone else, you'd have been dead or captured—"

"Proving nothing, except that two exhausted people on foot couldn't have hoped to outrun four men on horseback!" She looked across him, at Anna. "Anna, have you another of those damp cloths I might use, here? It may not be fever, but he's too warm."

"—an' I'll not have you talking about me as though I'm not here!"

"Oh, shush!" Keeping his hand, she let go his arm to take the cloth Anna had wrung out for her, and made to wipe his face. "You've gone flushed and broken out in a sweat, don't try to tell me you're comfortable."

"I'm not!" Especially not with a hand that unskilled so near his eyes. He twitched the cloth from her fingers, to make a brisker business of the task than she could, then pushed it back into her hand, and gave her a look of sheer frustration. "Not with any of this!"

"That's because you're choosing to upset yourself with it all, when you needn't." She dropped the cloth and levelled a finger at him. "Now, you may just as well choose to take a breath and ask if there's anything wrong in this moment, that you're not making so!

"I'm not joking," she said, when he stared at her, tight-lipped. "Deep breath—right now!" She beckoned, and drew in a breath of her own, and reluctantly he matched it, and winced.

"Then,"she went on, "you can tell me what is supposed to be wrong about anything you did regarding Finn." He looked round at her again, and she sighed. "Eric, I did see what you did to him, and all I could think, was—I cannot begin to imagine the strength it took, to do that."

That stopped him, staring up at her, feeling himself lose colour. "Oh, no. I thought we'd got him down, before you'd been anywhere near."

She shook her head, and once more pushed back her hair. "No. While you and William were making plans with Beith, and the others were taking care of Gus," she said, "I went back to the pool, to see what had become of the Hart. Quert came with me, and we came upon him, hanging there as you'd left him, or the husk of him, stuck through on those great splinters from the core of that shattered tree." She glanced round at the others. "Think of a pincushion overturned, hanging aslant the pins driven through it, and you will be near enough the idea."

" _Damn._ "

"Sh. I'd seen worse." She slipped her hand under his elbow again, and patted his arm in a soft invitation to let it fall again against hers. "Death has been less a novelty before my eyes, than I might wish."

He shifted carefully, easing the strain on his shoulder, and she paused.

"I'm sorry you had to kill him, as much as that any of us had to kill anyone, but there was no choice. He'd never have let either of us go, and that wasn't to be borne, either. Honestly, we didn't even know if he could be killed, after that first time you fought, when he just pulled your ax out of his side and kept coming! But you just turned to face him when he came. I swear, you didn't hesitate—"

"—an' it all went to hell, from then," he said. He pulled up his free hand to rub his eyes wearily. "I missed him comin' off his horse—couldn't tell where he'd gone, until I turned round and he was on me—and fact is, he was a lot better fighter than me. He had me on my face more than on my feet, and my ax away from me inside of a minute. I got my arm twisted hard enough to throw me back so hard I landed on my front, and no sooner got up, than he had me backed into a tree, and was doing his best to pin me to it through the guts."

"That's what I mean by being a hair's breadth from no use to either of us. That's when he got his knife into my side, and I very nearly didn't get it out of me."

He let his hand fall, and blinked, staring up at the shadowed ceiling. "Then he told me—that he admired my fight, and that my wife had been the same, and when I asked how he should know anything of her, he said he remembered them all. By that I'd understand, all those he'd killed, who fought his taking them.

"He told me she'd screamed for me, but I wasn't _there_ , an'—I don't know what happened next, beyond that I went down again hard, and when I picked myself up, he was there with that baton of his at my throat, and the blade of an arrow ready to follow it.

"He told me I could beg her forgiveness now in the other world, and beyond him, I saw that tree, with all the shattering at its end." He stopped. "I managed to charge him, then, an' stick him there, an' hold him there until he stopped calling for that witch sister of his to heal him, an' just kind of shriveled up an' died.

"And there," he said, looking up into her face, "fact becomes, that if you want to thank anyone for your rescue that day, it needs to be Lord William. Because after that, I was _done_. I just sat down hard and shook, and considered being sick, for a bit, until Beith and Gort came along an' patched me up enough to be going on with.

He drew back the hand she had caught, and pulled roughly at the bedclothes beside him.

"If I'd been all you had, Finn alive or dead would have made no difference, because there were three others to take you, and they'd have done, and it'd have all been over."

For a long moment, Snow White no more than considered him with an expression unreadable beyond affection. Tired, he turned away, and closed his eyes against unexpected tears.

"Eric," she said, "there are moments when you appall me." She sighed, and reached to stroke his hair, and when he started at the touch, slipped her hand to break the tear sliding from the corner of his eye, against the side of her finger. "You know—right now, I think I would like nothing so much as to hold you very, very tightly, for just a little while. Would you let me?"

Anything resembling judgement should say _no_ , or any other damn thing he could get out, to protest such an offer from her—beyond being his queen in the morning, still a girl barely half his size—but between judgement and impulse, in the moment, there was no contest. He couldn't have got denial past the lump in his throat, anyway. So he met her eyes again, and nodded, and when she bent to slide her free arm around and under his head, no more than drew in a breath as best he could, and turned to lean against her.

Mercifully, she had the sense not to even try lifting him. She only eased herself sheltering around him, scarcely as much as pulling him to her, and when he bowed his head to keep some little distance still between them—his forehead resting against her shoulder, rather than his cheek—no more than leaned her cheek against his hair, and held him firmly.

"I do not understand, and I do not ever _want_ to understand," she said, "how you so fail to understand your own worth." He felt her turn and press her lips against his hair. "Oh, my poor love—and no! you are not going to yell at me for calling you that!" she said, when he tensed. "No. You are not going to get out of my loving you."

"Then maybe I'm not," he murmured, "but there's nothing it changes _._ "

"Sh." She locked her hands together at his shoulder, and he gave up that last little distance between them, to nestle closer in her arms.

"I probably should have asked," she said, and he felt her glance at Anna. "But it seemed to need doing."

"You might've done," Anna said, a trifle sharply, but from the feel of it, she no more than glanced up. "But I wouldn't disagree, and with him further over, I have a better view of these knots." She paused, and reached in to rub his shoulders gently. "So even if you might be applying the principle of forgiveness being easier got than permission, my lady, I can live with it as long as you can both now stay right where you are, until I'm done."

"I think we can manage that," Snow White said, and he felt her smile again, as he reached his nearer arm to circle her waist.

* * *

"You condemn yourself for not being equal to every threat," she said a little later, her breath brushing warm on his forehead. "but what more could you be, and still be human?"

 _So much,_ he thought, and mostly things he was past being, or had never been. So little, of anything she should need now.

And in the moment, all too humanly, getting too warm. Warm enough, to be breaking a light sweat from brow to—well, he needn't be too concerned about anything below the sheet and blanket covering him, but if he'd anything to do with the way the scent of lavender was now coming up from the fine warm wool of Snow White's dress, the sooner they might have a little distance between them again, the better.

"Too much," he said, and sighed. "Ah, I think you may have to let me go a little, here, Princess, or I'm liable to melt."

She eased back a little, and smiled. "That might make two of us. Here, close your eyes." She pulled up her damp washcloth from where it had fallen to the edge of the bed, and came to wipe his face. Her touch was still gentle with uncertainty, but she did seem to have noted what he'd done earlier, and he sighed again in relief.

"Thanks. Now ask 'what better?' and I'll say 'smaller, for a start'."

"What?" She looked at him in puzzlement, then laughed outright. " _You?_ Smaller as in—what? Easier to cuddle?"

"No!" But he did smile at that, against her shoulder. "I'm talkin' about what you need in whoever you do hire next, to keep you safe."

"That will probably work out to a dozen men at least." Her smile shaded rueful. "Eric, protecting a queen _isn't_ usually a one-man job. But why smaller?"

"It's a failing in the bigger men like me," he said. "We've the size and strength, not to need the skill that smaller ones do. We don't have to be as good, to be impressive. But it's that skill you need, and the fierceness that goes with it, in the best." He regarded her soberly. "Add younger, faster, and more alert, because in the end it's all nothing if they don't keep a better watch over you, an' I think I've proved that too, well enough."

"Ohh, I think I see where this is going." she said. She breathed a sigh, touched now with exasperation. "You and William both."

"Before we come to that," said Anna, "I am now two half knots from having these bandages undone, and we need to consider a problem just a bit more pressing."

"What?" asked Snow White.

"For the next little while, Eric, everything I do to you is likely to hurt. Your best hope of it being less, rather than more, will be to hold as still as you can, and hold on tightly to something you need not fear breaking."

"That'll be the pillow, then," he said. He nudged Snow White gently, and she made room enough for him to shift and settle himself again, before once more circling her arm round his shoulders. A little more distraction than he might have needed, but this might be a moment when more would do better than less. "Aye, well, then—carry on, Anna."

He tensed, bracing himself, as she tugged the last knot loose in the bandage around his middle, and the dressing around his side slid wetly, harsh against chafed skin. "Ow!"

"Sorry," she said. She folded the bandage away, carefully, and he set his teeth with a hiss as she plucked the wet dressing away, and the chill of air stung against his side. "Well, at least this one isn't _stuck_."

"Here!" Goody Coyle heaved herself up, to hover beside her. "I'll take that away for you, Mistress. Then I'll get in that other lamp, so you can see better what you're about."

"Thanks, that'd be a help." Anna reached for another of her bundles, broke it open, and stooped to soak both its contents and wrapping in the basin beside her.

Carefully, Snow White stretched to see past his arm, then flinched and turned her head aside. "Oh, my God!" For a moment she bent her cheek against his hair, and her grip tightened, then gentled again, before she swallowed and looked back. "Anna, how bad is this?"

"Nothing fatal, or we'd know it already," Anna said, "but messy." She pressed her fingers briefly and firmly over Snow White's. "Just keep his arm and your sleeve out of it, now, while I see about cleaning it up."

"I hope we haven't made matters worse with that dressing," said Goody Coyle, returned with the lamp. "That does all look a deal redder than it did this morning."

"Nothing that won't mend." Anna spared her an untroubled look, before wringing out the cloth from the basin. "That's the trouble with cloth. Unless scraped to lint, it takes up no more from any wound, than will stick it solid once it dries. When it doesn't get to dry, as this hasn't, then once the dressing has taken all it can, it chafes."

She blotted his side carefully, and the still-warm water stung too sharply for him not to groan. He squeezed his eyes tighter shut, and clung to both bedclothes and pillow, as the wet cloth pressed his side.

" _Which_ it shouldn't have done, Eric, if you'd had the sense to stay quiet the rest of the day. But you didn't, did you?" She frowned, "No. At best I'd say wandering about like a lost soul all afternoon, but as that isn't how those knots got so tight, there's more to it than that."

Jeff's boot scraped, and she turned as though at a touch.

"Won't speak for the whole afternoon," he said, "but where I was napping, over in the great hall, we saw him in and out quite a bit. More than once when I turned over, he'd be drifting past like some great brown ghost, or talkin' a little with whoever was to hand, and then it seemed off to do whatever they might be needin'."

Her hand stilled, and Eric set his teeth again.

"In other words, you were restless enough to bear the pain and distraction of chafing your side half raw, better than finding any place to settle," she murmured, "or God forbid, anyone to talk to, who might help you to a calmer frame of mind."

He turned to cast her an injured look, and she matched it with a severe one. Then severity melted to something softer. "You trusted so completely, didn't you?—that no one would have time, care, or patience, to spare for you." she said, "I'll wager you didn't even ask."

He gave her no reply to that, and she looked down. "I wish I could swear that anyone would have, if you had."

"I didn't ask," he said.

"What I can only wonder at," said Snow White, "is how you can have gone so long without saying anything about this. Two, three—no, four!—whole days up and down through the mountains, in all sorts of weather, sleeping rough in the cold, and no word to anyone? Not to mention everything since, and your being able to fight at all, this morning—"

"But I didn't—not say anything, that is," Eric said. "I just didn't say anything to you. Beith and Gort knew, and later the infirmarer at Hammond's."

"Why not, then?"

"What was there any point in saying? There was nothing you could do about it, and you'd enough on your mind already."

"I might've stood the distraction!" She shifted round to look him in the face, her expression growing troubled. "Except you were hardly talking to me at all by then, were you? You were there, you still helped me as you had, but—we weren't talking any more. You weren't guiding me, so much, any more, as—" She stopped. "Oh, Eric. _Attending_ me."

"Aye." He nodded. "What else was there to do?"

"You'd never hid before, that you were hurt."

"I wasn't hiding anything!" Once more too warm, he pulled up his hand, to brush at his forehead. "There was no reason to say anything! We'd done the best could be done with it, I wasn't going to die of it, and it wasn't so bad then, anyway, no' really any more than a— _OWWW!"_

He started, and for an instant flinched down, gasping, all but curling around himself, as Anna whipped round and landed a brisk slap on his side. " _What—in—God's—name?!"_

Before he could let himself think twice about it, he had pushed up on his elbow and wrenched around fast enough to all but knock Snow White into the edge of the chest beside the bed, and cause Greta to grab for the lamp with a squeak of alarm. " _Anna,_ _have you gone completely mad?!_ "He stared at her in plain shock, tears welling. "Damn it, woman, that _hurt!_ "

He froze, staring past her as Jeff brought his hand to his face and began to laugh. " _An' you think it's funny, do you?!"_ Pain forced him back around to lean on his elbows, head down and fighting to breathe. "If you weren't so wrong, I'd get up and teach you otherwise!"

" _Ooo_ , Lord, no, lad!" Jeff said, in as nearly a strangled tone. "But I'm afraid it is something we might've seen coming. Or I might've, if I'd not learned not to risk saying the sort of thing you just nearly did, a very long time past!"

He pushed himself up, shaking his head, and made to get by Goody Coyle. "An' speaking of things coming, excuse me, Goody, I think I'd best be up an' get the door for you."

"Nay," said Goody Coyle, "that'll only be my old man comin' in, innit?"

"May be," he replied, "but I hear more metal clinking on those stairs than when he left. Best I just have a look for us." He steadied her hand and slipped past. "You stay and keep that light where it'll do the most good. An' you just carry on, wife—I know this next part right well."

"Aye," said Anna, and glared at Eric as he stared up at her again. She raised a warning finger. "That being, Eric, I would expect the next words out of your mouth were about to be something in the nature of _'it's no' but a scratch'! Am I right?!"_

"An' it was goin' on better, up to this morning!" He glared, as the pain burned on down through his side. "The which I promise you, it does not feel to be doing now!"

"Because that was no scratch, and never was." She set her fists on her hips and gave him a look of tight-lipped exasperation. " _Men!_ You're all so accursedly predictable, when it comes to denying any wound that hasn't killed you is worth notice—and it's a degree of falsehood I am not inclined to take from any man I have the care of!" She stretched to favour Snow White with as severe a look. "Never—ever!—let a man get away with that one! He'll only ever get himself in trouble with it, and likely make more work for every woman who cares about him, into the bargain."

"Ulp." Snow White pulled herself up and reached to steady him, opened her mouth to speak, and then evidently changed her mind, as Anna shot to her feet, and stepped to turn and shake his pillows.

"It also matters little enough how it may have been this morning," she continued, patting his shoulder in a brisk invitation to lie down again, "next to its being half strained open again now.

"Add sore from chafing half the day under damp cloth, and if there's one thing I want through your thick head before we're done, it's that you need to heed the harm you've done yourself a good deal better, for at least a fortnight!"

"Aye! Ow!" He dropped back, eyes closed and teeth set, for a moment, then gave it up with a groan and wiped roughly at his eyes. "Now, is there any chance whatever that we might take that point as understood, and _you stop hurting me to prove it?!"_

* * *

"Eh, we've definitely found _him!_ " said a pleased voice from the direction of the now-open door, where Jeff had reappeared, and Alf Coyle could be heard advising those behind him to mind their footing up the tower stairs. By the sounds behind him, there was now a larger party coming up the stairs, than he had left with, and an instant later, Gort's snowy head appeared round the alcove entrance. "An' here's our princess too, as promised."

"Gort?" Snow White looked over her shoulder and smiled, as the brush-haired dwarf waddled in to stand, fists on his hips, at the end of the bed.

"I see you found our huntsman," he observed to her, then gave Eric a satisfied grin. "A bit the worse for wear, eh, lad? Though I shouldn't imagine you're complaining, lookin' at where it's got you."

"Oh, bloody hell," said Eric. He shook his head, and slumped back on the pillows. "No, please, now just tell me that we've no more of those little hellions of yours slinkin' up the stairs behind you."

"Nah, they're still back at the Duke's," Gort said mildly. He turned to beam up at Goody Coyle, as she turned to look aghast from him, to her husband, and past to the open door. "And a good evening to you, Goodwife Coyle. As you see, I and a couple of my lads met your husband on his way back from the royal apartments, an' when Lord William and some of his armsmen came along from the other direction, it was decided we should all just come along and see how things stood here."

"Aye," she said, in a distracted voice. "Well, you'll have to forgive us being in some disarray, at the moment."

"From the sound of it, just short of a riot." Alf Coyle had stepped aside in his turn, and stood now looking back as William appeared at his shoulder. He took in the room, then swung round to stop the man behind him.

"It's all right, Sergeant, she's here—they're both here—and it's a bit snug. You and the others had best wait below."

He sighed, gave Eric a measuring look, then smiled. "Well, you look a bit worse than I'd expected, but from the sound of you, I'm guessing this isn't mortal."

"No," Snow White gave him a relieved look. "I think we've settled that much."

"Good. " William smiled a little wearily. "I've had enough 'mortal' for one day. So, is this likely to take long enough, to be worth my sitting down?"

"Probably," Eric told him. "Come and sit here on the end of the bed, until Anna here is done with me, an' then, if we can ever get things quiet around here, and everyone else off to bed—" He gave the other as desperate a look as he dared. "I need a word with you after!"


	7. Love and Recognition

"Aye, sure." William gave him a thoughtful look. "That we can do, I expect."

He turned to acknowledge the Coyles, who had drawn together at the corner of the bed, and stood watching him now, a little guarded. Goody Coyle was still holding her lamp, but her free hand now braced her arm as though she feared it might shake if she didn't, and her expression was uneasy. Her husband's might be less so, but the way he had stepped close and laid his hand at her shoulder could be reassuring himself, as easily as her.

"I'm sorry if we've worried you," William said, smiling. "I'd just not like to think of my father coming in, to have anyone report the princess missing. Which is a thought!" He swung round to Jeff, who still held the door. "Jeff, would you go down and have the sergeant send a man to tell them at my father's quarters, it's all right, we've found her and all's well?"

"Aye, Lord William," said Jeff, and went out.

"Then it's just a matter of how long we may need to impose on your patience," he continued. He faced the couple again and smiled more easily. "I imagine you start your mornings earlier than most, and tomorrow will be busy enough that we need not to keep you later than we may."

"Nah, it's no worry there," said Coyle. "It's still early enough, and wi' all the excitement going on, I doubt we'd be asleep anyway." He gave his wife's shoulder a squeeze and went to drag one of the two straight wooden armchairs from beside the fire. "I'll say take a chair, though, milord, in preference to the bed. It may have stood our two girls sleepin' in it up to the elder's marryin', but add you to young Eric and Mistress Anna, here, and all might end on the floor."

"Thanks." Taking the chair from him, William pulled it nearer the side of the bed, and sat down. "Now here's hoping I don't fall over asleep where I sit. It's been a long enough day."

"It's no' done yet," Eric said. Anna having settled herself once more beside him and bent to busy herself with her basin of water, he reached again for the end of the pillow. However much he might call himself eased by anyone's efforts this past hour, none of it was measuring up well against the strain of everything else come with it. Except—with Snow White's tapping his wrist and beckoning when he looked—the offer of that soft half hug, again, to help keep his arm out of Anna's way. That, and when he reached to accept it, that lightest of kisses she bent to press on his forehead.

"Huh," said Gort. "From the looks of either of you, that'll be a short conversation."

He gave Goody Coyle a bright evil smile and a brisk pat at the knees, making her jump back enough for him to push past her at the side of the bed, ducked aside as Anna came up with a start to stare at him, and slipped forward to lean all but into her lap for a better look at Eric's side. "Oh yeah, Huntsman, you've a right mess goin' there now, haven't you? No wonder your colour's no better than Her Highness' here, an' it's not just a matter of having washed the dirt off, is it?"

He pushed back and gave Snow White a speculative look. "Well, you know the answer for this, don't you, Princess?

"Do I?" She frowned in faint puzzlement. "I don't think so. Not past doing the obvious..." She sighed and brushed her hand lightly through Eric's hair. "Here, Eric, lift your head a little." When he blinked and did so, she swept her fingers under his cheek, gathering the damp locks back from his face, and pulled them neatly behind him. Went on digging, as he settled back into the pillow, to get the edges of the bandage that had wrapped his shoulder, pulling them smooth and once more within easy reach.

"Aye," Gort observed. "Well, maybe not. Well, I should say the answer is, then, that you need to pull him over and give him a good cuddle."

"What?" She grinned, then laughed outright at Eric's startled upwards glance. "Not that I'm objecting, but what should that do?"

"Had you not realized?" Gort planted his hand on the wall by the head of the bed. "You're the Lady! Blessed by the White Hart, power of life and all that." Her expression went blank, and he regarded her in surprise. "Look, did you not notice, that first night we had you hanging about our camp? Just being near you was clearing up most of our ailments! Now, wounds are a bit more serious, but I'd wager you give our lad a nice warm cuddle, and you'll have him in no pain in no time."

"Oh, bloody hell," said Eric. "Gort, shutup!" He flinched as Anna took the wet cloth again to his side, and clenched both hands tight in the pillow. "She's already done! An' I'll not say it didn't help, but ow—" He stopped with a groan, as he was patted dry briskly enough for it to burn. "Ow! I'll not say the effect lasts long, either!"

"Well, it's not like you've given it much chance, has it?" said the dwarf. "Not wi' then provoking Mistress Anna to smack you!" He could hear the grin in that, and set his teeth. "Not that I'd quarrel with her judgement there, I'd easily see the temptation!—but I'd still offer the suggestion, Princess, if you want him more comfortable."

"Well, I could—" Snow White had dropped her free hand on the pillow at his back, and shifted now as though considering how she might manage to gather him back in her arms.

"Oh, ow, no, no' just this minute!" She settled for laying her hand around the one he'd clenched into the pillow, and he pulled in a breath as the searing across his abraded skin eased, to no more than enough to make his eyes water. "An' no, I'm not letting go, here, an' you just keep your fingers out of it!" He relaxed again, eyes closed, as Anna gave his side a rest. "If she has any plan to put stitches in that cut, I could too easy break your hand once she gets at it."

"No stitches," Anna said. She took up a small earthenware jar and set about working the plug from its top. She sighed and her lips set briefly when he turned to look at her. "I'd probably have done, the day it happened, but this much later, no." The jar came open, releasing a scent of fresh crushed greenery. "It's never as well done, once a wound's as well on to healing as this was, and in this case it's too sore."

"So we shan't have the fun of watchin' you stitch him up, then?" said Gort. "Damn. " He stretched for a look at the contents of the jar. "Eh, that smells not bad. What's in it?"

"Comfrey, honey, and a little beeswax."

"No mint?"

She regarded him in surprise, and shook her head. "Not going into an open wound. As this is about to do, Eric, so you may want to brace yourself."

"It shouldn't sting too much," she said, "but it sticks more than the stuff you know, and it may pull a bit, as I spread it around."

Eric tensed, leaned into the pillow and set his lips against a groan, as she swept a mass of sticky salve into the cut, and spread it swiftly the length of it. To be fair, she wasn't being untruthful, but pulling a bit, across as much of his side as she was now covering in the stuff, was amounting to quite a bit of pull. Beside him, Snow White gave a sympathetic murmur, and held him a little tighter.

"You know, Master Gort," Anna went on," this could take half the time, if you would see to squeezing out the dressings I set to soak in that basin, there. If you had a hand in first tending this, I expect you know what fresh white moss is like, and what I'd like, is the whole of that wrung out as nearly like it, as I may have."

"Is that what that is?" Water plashed, as Gort pulled up the basin to the edge of the bed, and investigated. "Eh, so it is, I hadn't noticed. Nice little sheets, too. What's this wrappin' it?"

"Curtain gauze."

"No' bad," he observed. "Very handy, if you've none fresh about."

"Gort." Snow White rubbed Eric's shoulder and stretched herself a little higher, as by the sound of it Gort got to doing as asked. "A question."

"What?"

"What you just said about being near me—"

"Aye?"

"How much might it help that power, if I put my will behind it?"

"Directin' the healing, you mean?"

"Yes."

"I dunno." There was enough of surprise and uncertainty mixed in Gort's tone, that Eric leaned back and turned his head carefully to look at him. The dwarf's expression was thoughtful, lips pursed as he considered some long-unconsidered place in memory. "As a rule, you big folk haven't that ability, but with you being of the blood—"

"Gort," said Eric, "you just stop right there! You know where she's going with this, an' it's no' a good idea, we both know it!"

"Eric, I think it's a question I've a right to ask!"

"Oh, every right," he said, turning back to her, "and I a right to fear what you may do with the answer! Especially when it's comin' from someone, and the first words out of his mouth are "I dunno!"

She dropped her hand from his, to brace herself against the edge of the bed. "I was wondering, if there might be any way to help you more!"

"An' I should just let you?!" He put an edge in his voice to match hers. "If I'm the friend you say, Your Highness, I've as much right to ask what you think you're doing? Do you think you know?! Have you any idea what it might cost you?—past none at all, the hell you do!"

She blinked, and beyond her he saw William push up against the arm of his chair, staring, at his tone, and went on. "Any power you may have, as of this moment you've no knowledge of it, or feeling for it. Not for its effects or its limits! So you try to give more than nature gives you, more than what flows surplus through you, and what's the cost to you?

"Then where does it end?" He turned his hand and swung it up to catch her arm. "If you learn you could heal me out of love, an' you do so, what's next? Do you then do the same for Anna's man, when he gets back? Does your next stop become the barracks across the way? Do you heal every man with a wound? Could you bear not trying?"

He shook his head, gazing up at her. "You might not last to morning."

"I hadn't thought—" She looked aside briefly, and bit her lip.

"No, you hadn't!" He leaned back to catch Anna's eye. "Anna, my shoulder's getting tired. Would it be any trouble to you if I work my arm back now, to your side of the bed?"

"No. I'll need you to do, soon enough. Gort, shift aside a little." She stretched to catch his elbow against her arm, curving her wrist to keep salve-loaded fingers out of the way, while he slipped his arm past hers. Gort added a damp nudge to steer his hand into her lap, and carefully he laid arm and shoulder flat against the pillow.

Snow White let him go, her expression abstracted, and raised her hand to push her hair back again over her shoulder. Not a good sign to see that young girl in her retreating into silence, and he heaved a sigh.

"As queen," he said, "you've a whole land that needs you. You don't start giving anythin' of yourself, when you don't know how it works, or how far you can take it safely. An' then, by God, you make sure the whole damn world knows your limits, before you get into it!"

"Aye," Gort agreed. "'S a good point, Huntsman. I'll say no more." He patted Eric's shoulder, offered Anna the moss he had wrung out, and gave Snow White a guarded look, his eyebrows knitting. "I'll have a word with Muir about this, later, an' see if there's anything he knows—for certain."

She nodded, on the face of it resigned, but there was still something stubborn in the set of her mouth, that Eric felt echo in his own expression.

"And if you need a really bad thought to stop you," he added, "can you be sure the woman you had to kill this morning didn't start out the same way?"

That brought her head up, and he shrugged at the dismay in her face. Consider it, girl. Ravenna could heal, they knew it. But in the end, it was only herself she cared to.

"You," she said, "ask the best questions."

Sobered, she shook her head and brought up her hand to rub her eyes. "Eric, you ask questions I couldn't imagine. Questions it would never occur to me to ask, that I need to be asking." She gazed back at him steadily. "Do you wonder at all, that I should want you beside me, in my life?"

"No, but you can't have me," he said. "And I can live with that, because I'm not the only one who can do that for you, and in the life that lies before you now, not the best." Something in her eyes retreated, and he gave her a sharper stare. "And did we not just have this conversation? And did you not just tell me you understood, and I wasn't telling you anything you weren't taught young?"

"And did you not also hear me say, not good enough, and we both deserve better? " she retorted. "That you are my friend, and I am of no mind to deny that fact?"

"An' as I keep saying, that doesn't change anything! It'll still no' do, an' it'll be the ruin of both of us!"

"And I have had just about enough of you telling me my opinion counts for nothing!"

"Oh, dear God," said William. "Eh! The both of you! " He pulled himself forward and leaned heavily on the arm of his chair. "Would either of you mind telling me just what the hell it is you're talking about?"

"Me," said Eric. "And her, goin' on together." Not perhaps the best way to put it, the way that made William pull up straighter and grip the arm of his chair. He leveled his voice and prayed sufficient calm for both of them. "Her Highness here, is trying to see her way clear to keepin' me around, despite my makin' it to all intents and purposes perfectly plain, that she can't do!"

He turned again to Snow White. "You think that you can just walk around what I've told you and somehow find cause to keep me close, and I promise you, you can't!"

"Enough," she said, "enough of this melodrama!" She held up her hand, forestalling, when William made to speak. "William, he's been like this all evening."

"No more than this hour since you got here!"

"All right! I'll grant you that—and that you'd right enough to be dismayed at waking up amidst the crowd that came with me!"

"Oh, no, no," he said. "No, Your Highness! The crowd was good for a moment's nasty surprise. For dismay, it took the fact of you leading it!"

"Now, there I think we can agree!" She set her hands wide against the edge of the bed, and braced herself again, staring at him. "You have been in the most complete panic ever since you rolled over and saw me standing beside you, and I think it is time to cut to causes! What on Earth has got into you, to make you so hell-bent on pushing me away?"

He stared back at her. "I told you! Have you not heard a word I've said?"

"I should think I have!" She gazed up towards the ceiling, her eyes going distant. "I've heard you demanding to know my interests in searching you out, and accusing me of looking to make a pet of you! I've heard you all but yelling at me, that I shouldn't be doing anything to show myself even so fond as to care that you live! That even so little should now be a favour too great between us—"

"Even so little as holding my hand and kissing me?!" He poked a finger into her shoulder. "Never mind calling me your love! Which you're a lucky maid, not to have me take you seriously!"

"Oh, Jesus," muttered William, and pulled his hand to his eyes.

"—and it'll no' do!" she continued, "Then you read me a lecture about being careful who I'm seen to favour and how far, that I swear my father might have read me in my cradle!" Her gaze slipped back to his for a moment. "Eric, there's no lesson a royal child learns earlier than the peril of showing favour to any above any other, without manifest good cause, unless it's how to walk!"

"An' you think that you have that 'manifest good cause', do you?"

"At least as certainly as that, if I show you any favour past this hour, there'll be none around here who won't rate me a fool, and you worse if you stand for it!" She shook her head. "Eric, grubby as your history may be, as soon as we pass from fact to opinion and you're the subject of it, fact is that the last thing I've any reason to trust is your opinion!" She all but rolled her eyes. "Especially not the way you've been going on, this hour!"

"Have you not noticed, then, that there's been no ringing chorus of disagreement with anything I've told you?"

"Which might be what?!" William smacked the arm of his chair. "Give over, the both of you!"

"Most of two days and nights trekking up and down the hills after you two," he said, staring at them, "and I'd hardly have guessed you knew each other."

He shook his head in wonder. "For all your sticking close as each other's shadows, I wouldn't have sworn to thirty words a day passing between you! And then after everything, when we reached my father's castle, you, Eric, disappear without a word—you don't even come out of the woodwork when she rises!—which, from the looks of it this instant, should have surprised me a lot more than it did—

"Only then she doesn't as much as ask after you, between then and this morning, or, I'd swear, expect you to show up beside us when you did."

He spread his hands and stared at them. "So how do you come to this? "

"A question for Her Highness first, perhaps?" Anna asked. Having finished sticking the edges of the gauze-wrapped dressing into the ointment now coating Eric's side, she had stretched to gather up the folded ends of the bandages around his middle, and was now drawing them neatly back around him, folding them into careful half knots. "Eric, I need you to hold your breath for a little—say a slow count to twenty, while I set these knots again."

"When you like," he said, and she nodded.

"Deep breath in, then most of it out," she said "I want this snug, when you relax." She glanced over at William. "Pardon the interruption, Lord William."

"It's all right." He smiled, a little thinly. "Snow?"

Snow White looked back for a moment at Eric, and sighed in irritation.

"Eric and I have been having a discussion," she said, "more in the nature of a running battle! around the problem that it appears to distress him terribly, that I consider him my friend."

She pushed herself to her feet, brushed down her skirt, and turned to William. "He's been clutching at every straw, in the name of convincing me that I should neither value nor care for him. First, maintaining that his reputation's a peril to mine, and the ruin of both of us a certainty if it should be known past this hour, that I regard him with any kindness whatever—this despite everything he's done for me—"

"Which has been little enough!" Eric said in protest. He froze, as Anna gave him an exasperated look, and sucked in again hastily to where he'd been. "Oops!—sorry! Sorry!"

"—which, as he would also have it, I have no power to testify to, and be believed." She folded her arms and all but rolled her eyes to the heavens. "Then he belittles by turns both his care and protection of me—"

"As I keep pointing out, William, she's done better protecting me, than I her!"

"It's not a matter of better or worse!" She blew out an irritated breath. "Though you know, I should call the honours fairly even between us—but that wouldn't be my point! Do you not see it?"

"See what?" Eric rolled his head aside on the pillow to make matters easier for Anna, as she shifted closer, to get on with tending the gouge on his chest. Aching weariness bit, and he let his eyes fall closed. "All I see, Princess, is that in the end, I still failed you!"

"But you didn't!"

"No more than any of us," said William, his voice unexpectedly gentle. "You were hardly alone for that part of it, Huntsman."

"Nay," said Gort in a subdued tone, beside him.

Eric forced his eyes open to look from the one to the other, and found Snow White doing likewise, her expression dismayed.

"Oh, no," she said. "I'm not having this!" She held up a hand, palm flat. "No—we're round to the matter of Ravenna binding me, again, aren't we?"

"Aye," said Gort, and Eric nodded, and William sighed.

"Yes," he said. "As I told you." He looked down and away a moment, then lifted his gaze to meet hers, steadily. "As far we knew, Snow, you were dead."

"Except I wasn't! You have got to get over this," she said. "Both of you! All of you!"

She stopped, shook her head, raised hand to lips and then bowed head to hand a moment, rubbing her forehead. "How on Earth any of you can imagine that there was ever any hope of stopping her, is beyond me." She straightened and folded her arms again. "For Heaven's sake, William, she came upon me there on the mountainside disguised as you, and I never questioned! I didn't know she could do that! None of us knew she could do that! And we walked and talked there, it must have been most of a quarter hour—I even kissed her, and never guessed!"

He stared at her, lips parting in surprise, and she hesitated, her eyes going distant. "Though I think I did feel, then, that something was—wasn't right.

"Then she smiled, and teased me with that apple, as you might have done—"

"If I'd had any!" he said.

"—and at the first bite I took, it went all to grey fur in my hand, and then it felt as though the bite did the same in my throat, and it ran all through me in cold threads, choking me. Nothing I could do would move it." She drew her arms tighter around herself and looked towards the light. "And it was done. All went dark, I knew no more."

She turned to them again, her face shadowed. "Do you not see that with such powers, there is no way we could have kept her at bay forever?!"

"We—I—could have kept a better watch over you," said Eric.

Her expression went blank. "There was no reason."

"I saw you go! I should've at least heeded where you went, or followed you!" Tired, he lost the fight again, to keep his eyes open, and pulled his hand up to drag roughly at one and the other. "It's not like I didn't know you might wander off. I might at least have done better than doze off again!"

"Aye," Gort put in. "So might we all. We might have taken it in turns to keep at least a couple of us awake and beside you all the time."

"Oh, that would have been the least of it! " she said. She looked round at the group, lips set, then shook her head. "I wouldn't have dared to as much as step behind a rock to relieve myself, without at least two of you in sight!—which I suppose we might barely have managed on the trail, but don't you see? Once we'd got to the Duke's castle, it must have gone on the same!

"I must have accepted never being alone, or with only one person beside me, ever—and anyone who wished to deal with me would have to live similarly, because anyone who might come to me alone or unproven by others, ever after, might have been Ravenna." She threw up her hands. "I promise, no one could have kept up such a watch on me forever!"

"That doesn't," Eric said softly, "do one damned thing for the feeling of having nothing I could do, but stand there and watch you die! Not with my not having the wit to keep you in my sight, being any part of it!"

"Much the point I was trying to make, last night," said William. He rubbed his eyes, tiredly. "Or morning before last—whenever we talked." He gave Eric a rueful look. "I did try to tell her."

"Ah." Then they might both have misjudged her ability to sympathize with distress that didn't involve visible hurt. That, or William might not in fact have learned yet, about being stubborn in making a point to a woman unwilling to listen.

He bought time by looking down and wincing at Anna's re-dressing the scrape across his chest, then risked looking back at Snow White. "Fact remains, I'd made it my business to keep you safe, and I failed you, an'—" he shut his eyes again, and stopped. "Being blessed with the chance to repeat that mistake, I'd as soon never face it again."

"But you didn't!" she said.

He heard her step forward, her skirt brushing the side of the bed, and she bent, sliding her hand inside his wrist, bearing his hand down in hers as she dropped again to one knee beside him. "Eric, look at me." When he did, she cupped her free hand lightly round his head, stroking his forehead lightly. "Dearest Huntsman—you kept her from sticking a knife in me, right then and there! How is that failing me?!"

She sighed, when he stared at her in shock. "You didn't. Neither did William, nor," looking from William to Gort, "any of you. Yes, Ravenna got to me, as she must have done! I could even say as fate required—for how else I should ever have learned I might be her bane, I do not know!" Her tone softened. "Now, please, it's time for both of you to stop tormenting yourselves over things that didn't happen."

She glanced aside, past her shoulder. "You, William, with ever feeling you abandoned me, when the boy you were had no choice in the matter, ever."

"You, Eric, with—everything." She smiled, a little strained. "Oh, I am so far afield from what I set out to say. Which is that however light you weigh your help against mine—I cannot care, when what I see is that without you, this day might have never come."

"Can't think that," he said.

"I can." She laced her fingers comfortably around his shoulder, and smiled when he eyed her warily. "It took you as you were, to make me as I am."

She looked across at Anna, waiting as she restored her last careful knot in the bandage wrapping his shoulder, before going on.

"A harder man or a stupid one, less caring, might simply have handed me over to Finn. A gentler, or one less lost in his own misery, might have cared enough to ask more questions.

"You took me for no more than what I showed myself to be, and without cruelty, in those first days, no, you did not look to do more for me, than you could do without cost to yourself. One might say took no care of me at all, beyond keeping me alive—your hand across the rougher and slippery places, and a measure of shelter at your back, when we risked stopping to rest.

"But in so doing, you forced me to learn attention, and to know my own strength. Scolded me when I failed to use either as I must to survive, and in the face of my ignorance, tolerated neither rudeness nor protest from me either. And I think now that you knew before I did, how your heart had begun to open to me, and how much that frightened you, when you gave me your knife and showed me how to use it."

So easy to reach up, through the circle of her arm around his, and brush a finger against her cheek. At that she looked down, still smiling, and he drew a cautious breath, and spoke with a voice gone rough.

"Because lookin' at you," he said, "when I started to sober up, I couldn't bear you havin' no chance at all." He blinked, as her eyes raised to his again. "An' bein' the bastard I was to you, I won't swear to not feelin' guilty enough, that I didn't hope you might kill me, if I gave you the chance."

"I wondered, later. " She considered him. "All I could think just then, was that I couldn't hate anyone enough to do that to them. Not even you at your worst, which simply hadn't been so bad."

She smiled then, and freed her left hand to brush his hair back from his forehead. "I think I might have known then, too—at least that you cared enough to fear, which was an uneasy enough thought for that day."

"In the end, by preparing me to face what I must, you were the means of my deliverance.

"You couldn't have saved me. You couldn't have stood, between Ravenna and I. That wasn't going to be given, to you, or any man. But you did what I cannot think that any other man would have done.

"You armed me."

She stopped. "So why, now, do you want so badly to leave me?"

He met her gaze silently, and she breathed an understanding sigh. "Except that the one thing I haven't heard out of you so far, is that you do."

"No."

He closed his eyes as she bent closer and slid her arm around him, hand falling warm beyond the bandage once more wrapping his shoulder. Too easy, how the world narrowed down to her face, and the warmth of her arms around him, and the softness of her hair falling at his shoulder. Smaller, and a measure more delicate than the memory of touch burned into his skin—Sara had been taller, and fair, with eyes as blue as his own—but in the soft, fierce protection of that embrace, so terribly the same. Too much the same, for him not to gasp and grip her shoulder, and turn aside against her sleeve as his eyes filled.

"Oh, Eric." She hugged him tightly, until he had control enough to draw a deeper breath and relaxed again, against her shoulder, sniffing back the worst of the tears, then drew back enough to kiss him lightly again, at brow and cheek. "Is there any chance of my understanding any of this, whatsoever?" He sighed and stayed where he was, leaning against her, and she drew back, carefully, just far enough to smile into his eyes, when he looked up.

"Look," she said softly, "as I said, you are not going to get out of my loving you, but if it makes you feel any better, I might just see my way clear to not being in love with you. Would that help?"

"It—" He stopped, taking in that thought, then nodded. "Yes."

"Then say that, and be a little easier," she said, "because that, I think, I may manage."

She hugged him lightly, again, and he felt her smile. "Only two weeks back in the world? I hardly know if I'm capable of loving anyone, or anyone more than all the rest of it, it's too soon. But understand, the truth of my heart is that you are a brave and clever and caring and gentle man, and I will not wrong you as any of those things."

Her lips pressed light again, against his cheek. "That I will not, now or ever—" Her breath caught, and she froze. "Oh!"

"What?!" He tensed, as she pulled back and stared at him, and set her hand softly against his chest.

"Oh, my God."

"What?!"

She blinked, and regarded him with eyes briefly as distant and blank as those of a statue, and he froze as understanding dawned.

"Oh, no." And that, he thought, might have been the worst of things to say, with anything so near a note of panic in his voice, if it had not made Snow White shake her head and, sudden and unexpected, smile.

"You're impossible," she said, and drew back her hand a little, before reaching to touch his cheek. "Hold still—it'll take so little, to know." And with that she leaned closer, and pressed her lips softly to his.

He froze, then gripped her shoulder again, and could not have said in the moment whether it was to pull her towards him, or push her away. Past knowing anything he might do now must be done gently, there was everything in the warm exploration of that kiss, to make a man's mind go blank. He could only settle for holding her, for that moment, and leave deciding what to do about it later.

Then she drew in a breath, again, and bowed her forehead to his, and sighed.

"Oh, my God. Yes. It was you."


	8. Snow's Version, and An Agreement

"Ohh, yes." Leaning closer, for the space of a breath Snow White pressed her lips against Eric's cheek, then took a deep, thoughtful, and entirely deliberate sniff and laughed, when he recoiled against the pillow. "That was you."

"Aye," he said, "I'd guess it was."

The humour in her eyes faded, and she nodded and straightened, waiting.

He pushed up on his elbow and pulled the side of his hand across one eye, then pushed it back across the other, to clear the worst of the tears, collecting himself, before going on. "An' no, I don't understand how, either!"

"I think I might," she said. He eyed her uneasily as she dropped down enough to look him in the face, and slipped her hand lightly from around his shoulders, to catch the back of his neck. "But first, now—I do need an answer to my question."

" _Which_ you might ask at just a little greater distance," said Anna. She had drawn herself up, folded her arms, and was now regarding them severely. "Before I am more moved to ask, Princess, just what you think you're doing?!—or whether either of you have forgotten where you are!"

"I could say solving a mystery." Snow White turned, her expression still calm, but a shadow of unease touched her eyes, as she looked round at their audience. "Learning how Ravenna's spell came undone when it did, and under the circumstances—" and to his horror, when she looked back at him her voice caught, and she turned aside, her eyes welling. "Eric, I think I _do_ need that answer to my question!" **  
**

"Oh, no," he said in dismay, and reached for her. "Please, Princess, don't cry—" **  
**

_"How—can—you—do—this_?!"

She bowed her head a moment beside his unhurt shoulder, then brought her hand between them and pushed back, eyes closed. "It simply doesn't make _sense_."

"I'm sorry, but it does!" She fumbled in her sleeve for her handkerchief, and he caught her again at the shoulder. "I promise I'd no idea, no thought of this happening—"

"Whatever you did, or her working it out?!" William, who had come up staring with the rest of the room when she had kissed him, now pulled forward in his chair and reached to stroke her back. "Snow, what is it you're saying?—and Eric, what did you _do?_ "

"What she just did," Eric told him. "More or less."

"You—kissed her?"

"Aye." He nodded, and met William's stunned look with a bleak expression, before turning back to Snow White. "Look, I'll not say I'm sorry! I doubt that would make you any happier, it wouldn't me! It—it just turned out to be part of my sayin' goodbye!"

"In the chapel." said William. "At my father's keep."

"Aye." Eric nodded.

"And it worked." William looked blank, then cast a dazed glance around the circle of faces. "It— _worked._ "

"Ahh-ah!—I don't know that!" Eric said, and saw something stricken retreat, in the younger man's face. "Can't swear to anything, William, it's not like I was there when she woke!" He looked back at Snow White. "I only found out about it, same time as everybody else."

"I can be more certain." Snow White pushed her handkerchief back into her sleeve, and made to rise. Her hair swung down in her face again, and she threw it back. "I am—much more certain."

On her feet, she reached past him to pull up his pillow, turned it, and gave it a hard shake back into its proper shape. "Lie back.

"I think Gort's right," she said, flat, when he did, "there's an effect. You look less tired once I've been holding you a time, and any strength I may be giving you—I'd prefer you not waste it." She sighed and pressed two fingertips hard to her forehead, eyes briefly squeezed shut. "Not by trying to look any stronger than you are–or on arguing with me, either! I don't think it changes your need to rest, and you're right, we need to settle this now."

Behind her, Greta had risen from her seat by the lamp, caught up the stool still standing at her feet, and gone silently into the outer room to exchange it for the straight chair by the hearth. She came and set that now at her mistress' back, and Snow White glanced round at it, as the girl retreated once more to her corner.

"Thanks." She pulled the seat toward her and sank into it. "You need to know what I know, and I think no shame in anyone else knowing it, either. More use, to have it all known."

She folded her arms, and her gaze retreated. "I remember Ravenna hanging over me with her knife, and hearing you shout, Eric, and she rose and cried out and—exploded, into a flock of black birds, that spun up into the grey of sky and bare branches. I remember my sight going dim, and you holding me, William, and then, almost before I could think—nothing. Nothing at all, for—not no time at all, but I couldn't say how long."

"A day, a night, and another day through to night," said Eric, and she nodded.

"My next memory is of feeling that I lay somewhere bound in darkness, and of being seized, in that darkness, with an intolerable sense of grief. Grief which I knew in the moment was for another's pain than mine, and that in it, I stood witness to injustice beyond bearing."

She looked around at them then, then down at the handkerchief clenched in her hand.

"I knew it in that moment as the the pain of facing a death that had laid waste both to love and being loved, and to any hope of it after. To death as that first fact of life with which there could be," and her voice caught, "no temporizing—from which truth there could be no relief!—and I knew you deserved better."

She looked at Eric, her eyes welling again. "I'd no thought of it being you, but I know now—every certainty—as certainly as just now, in warmth of touch and scent and taste, and with that certainty, I felt a great pressure about my chest and arms, binding me, and the knowledge burning through me, that I couldn't leave you this way. That it was too unfair, you be left to feel so unjustly that you'd ever failed anyone, with your life laid waste again, and no way to know what might become of you after."

She closed her eyes and tilted her head back, against the tears spilling down her cheeks.

"I knew then, too, that there could be no redress for any of it! unless I might find a way, and that pressure built around me until I could feel it through every fiber of me.

"Then something _broke_ , and I knew the drawing of a great breath in darkness, and tears. And then I opened my eyes and saw the brightest light I had ever seen blazing up around me, and I could breathe, and move, and I knew _everything_ that had to follow, or I might as well be dead.

"Not how, but what, and that if I could come within reach of Ravenna, _I would find some way!—_ that whatever she was, however I doubted, this must end, and I knew it could end, and it would be worth my life, if that was what it took."

She stared at him in the silence. "And now, when I look at you, I feel so much _.._."

"And it's still no use!" he said roughly. "It'll still no' do!"

_"_ How will it not? _"_ She pulled up her handkerchief again, to wipe her eyes, and drew an unsteady breath. "Eric, after all you've done for me—and I will not hear one word more, of you calling it nothing—how is it not yours and mine to choose, that you stay beside me, in my life, as I would wish?"

"It's not," he said, "because it doesn't make _sense._ "

"What sense need it make, beyond that you are my friend!?" She threw up her hands, and stared at him. "Beyond that you anchor me in the world, and I am stronger with you beside me?"

"Not long, you wouldn't be!" Eric cast a glance at Anna as she rose and began to gather her things from the edge of the bed, and Gort, now retreated to the bench behind her. "Even if my past were as stainless as yours or William's, here—you look to keep me by you, for no better reason than you have, and even bein' careful and no more than callin' me your friend, it'll not be reason enough for most."

He looked to the Coyles, and to Jeff, now returned to lean on the back of William's chair, and to William, still hanging on the arm of that chair, silent, with something like a lost look in his eyes. "Perhaps no more than those in this room, that I might hope see there's no more to it."

"No more to it—than what? " She frowned. "What more should there be?"

He fought the urge to smile, and lost. "Only you could ask."

"Blithe hope!" said Anna, and both Gort and Goody Coyle snorted.

"Thinks well of himself, doesn't he?" commented Gort to the rest, and Eric did grin, then, at the assortment of snorts, smiling headshakes, and chuckles that produced. Even Greta stifled a soft giggle, and William smiled ruefully, turning to take in the others' reactions.

"Aye, but you all know what I'm talking about!" Eric said. "She doesn't."

"Not beyond thinking," said Snow White, "that you are having some joke at my expense!" She folded her arms and raised an Anna-ish eyebrow at him. "Now I should like you to let me in on it!"

"'S no joke," he said. He tugged the covers straighter beside him, caught up the still-damp washcloth she had dropped beside him earlier, and used it to wipe his face. "Not that it doesn't prove a point regarding you, that I'm happy to have proven, but mainly—even if they're laughin' at me, Princess, it says there's none other in this room fails to see the problem."

"What?"

He handed the cloth back to Anna, when she reached to collect it from him.

"That I'm not nearly old enough to be your father, and I clean up not so badly."

"Well, I shouldn't have said you were, or didn't." She studied him a moment, and on impulse he held out his hand, and the faintest of smiles twitched at her lips, before she hitched her chair closer, to take it. "I'd think you're only a little older than William or I," she said. She matched his soft squeeze of her fingers, her smile widening, "and I could even say, that you are very fetching in your underwear."

"I'm—" Eric felt his jaw drop, and stared at her. " _Wh_ —!" For a breath, words simply would not come. " _What_ —!" She began to laugh, and most of the others with her, and he managed to get his mouth shut. "Oh, dear God!"

Still chuckling, she brought up her handkerchief to blot her eyes again, rubbed his fingers affectionately, and he got down enough of a breath, for more.

"You are going to be a menace when you grow up! Your Majesty!"

"When I grow up?" She stopped and tilted her head. "You know, Eric, I did know the word 'handsome' by the time I was seven." She grinned again, at his stunned look. "I might also add, that you have the prettiest blue eyes I've ever seen."

" _Wh_ —!" The men might have mostly stopped snickering by now, but that only made the women laugh the harder.

"However," she continued, "if you mean to tell me, that anyone in their right mind should imagine my first interest on escaping Ravenna's control should be anything to do with entering into any sort of _liaison_ with the first man I should meet, not immediately trying to kill me—or that either of us, the past twelve days, has had time for thought of anything beyond staying alive—least of all romance!—given neither of us more than half trusting the other, and come to think of it, you telling me outright not to flatter myself!—then they are direly underestimating everything else we had to distract us!"

"Ohh, but it's not about anyone being in their right mind," said William. Snow White looked round at him, and he sighed, somewhere between exasperation and weariness. "I see where he's going with this, Snow, and he's got a point." **  
**

"Aye." Eric shifted to let his arm rest comfortably against her knee, and she swung back, to catch his wrist and cradle it against hers. "It's more about how people tell stories.

"Now, you and I know for a fact what a mess those first days of ours were. How little reason either of us had to be easy about the other, and how thin was that deal we made. What bein' in the Dark Forest was like. Knowin' we'd have Finn followin' soon enough, an' meanwhile being in danger from near enough everything that moved. Not to mention me bein' drunk and hurt an' uncivil, and you half-scared—it's no effort to see nothing should happen between us."

"Mmhm." She nodded. "And there was surely no chance after we met the dwarves, by which time I was so cross I was hardly willing to speak to you. Then by the time I'd got over it, you'd stepped back, and we both mostly stopped having anything to say."

"Mmhm." He nodded. "An' that's not even touching the fact you've been too nice to mention," he said, "that I'd expect you were taught from birth, not to give yourself to anyone below your station, or outside a properly negotiated marriage." He managed a smile. "I'd so far from qualify there, that you shouldn't have it in you to imagine that!"

She smiled. "I can't say I did, no."

"But at the end of it all, if what people see is you standing up to be queen, with me to hand looking none so old or unseemly either, and everything known of us that's there to be known—first thing they'll look for, is there to be more."

"For us to be—or have already been—lovers."

"Or destined, on the strength of—whatever it did, when I kissed you."

"What I said," she said. "But I think I know what you mean."

He stroked his thumb around the back of her wrist, gently, and she rubbed his arm back, with her free hand.

"Facts of life, Princess, tongues will wag. If I've no clear purpose in bein' by your side, such as bein' some sort of personal guard on the strength of bein' an old soldier—"

"Which we've agreed you've no wish to be," she said, "and I won't charge you with that!"

"An' you shouldn't, my not being fit for it!" He shook his head, at her once again briefly questioning look. "That'd soon be seen, an' the sense to be made from it every bit as bad.

"Best you might hope for," he said, "is that if anyone at all accepted there being no more to our dealings than either of us might say—I'll be judged the same as a child's soft toy, kept close to be squeezed when you're anxious. Next best, as just some damn great buffoon you keep around to amuse you—clever enough to take advantage of your kindness, but worthless on the whole, when I promise there's no place in your world, now, that I'd fit—which would make you either a child or a fool, for bearing with me.

"Worst, if any should decide I'm a friend that should never have got so near you, whose being kept close must prove your judgement lacking, and possibly your virtue as well. That's how I mean it could be the ruin of us both." He glanced aside, as Anna set her teeth and gave a slight hiss. "Would that be agreement, Anna?"

"To the risk," she said. "Yes. I'm sorry. At the least, there'd be questions."

He turned back to Snow White. "So, you go from being the wonder you've been to all so far, to bein'—what? More a child, or a fool, or just a misled young girl, than the queen you were born to be?" He met her gaze squarely. "You want to tell me now, that wouldn't weaken you?"

"No." She had stilled, gaze unwavering, and for a breath, her lips set. "I take your point." Taken it, and by her tone, the queen in her had understood. He risked a sigh, and squeezed her hand.

"All that, without even comin' round again, to the problem of everything wrong in my history."

"Aye, well, about that," said William. "Eric, I've a question."

"What?"

"How much wrong are you talking about? Or—no, wait." He glanced aside an instant, then back. "How sure can you be, that there's no place here you'd fit?"

"Sure enough I'd never make a guardsman," said Eric, "and that's all I can see, that anyone here might like me for, until they'd learn better."

William shook his head slightly. "I'm not thinking guardsman. You've been a professional soldier, and one of very few among us with any real experience in battle." A faint smile tweaked his lips. "You're a hellion with that ax of yours, and you knew exactly how to take the lead of that tortoise formation we did, to get Snow across the forecourt—"

"I'd no' make a drill sergeant, either!" Eric fixed him with a stubborn glare. "No, William, it'll not do. I was done with being a soldier five years ago, and I promise any army that ever had to deal with me in it, had reason to be glad of me deserting! I'm big, and strong, and fast for my size, but I've also a flair for making officers' lives hell, and there isn't a sergeant alive who'd stand me happily, given the way I tend to drink, fight, and fall asleep when I'm bored."

"Would you still be like that, though?" asked Snow White, giving his hand a squeeze, and him a nearing wistful look. "It sounds as though we might really need you more now, to teach others."

"That'd be a drill sergeant, in effect," he said. "I'd not have the patience, and as to the rest, yes, more likely than not." He squeezed her hand back, then slipped his fingers free and reached to brush her hair from where it had fallen over her shoulder. "All the more reason you'd never want me following you around to cabinet meetings, either, or sitting in the hall outside your door, morning and night—it's no joke about me fallin' asleep, and some tell me I snore."

She smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. "Not _that_ badly..."

He matched that smile, and let his hand stroke down her arm, to hold her lightly at the elbow. "It'll still no do." He gave her his own near wistful look. "Look, I spent this whole damn afternoon roaming the length and breadth of this castle, trying to see any place I might fit, that any but you might be happy to see me—and not only did I see no place, Princess, by sunset I was already feeling half-crazed with the noise and the dirt and all the high, cold walls here, and how so damn much of it stays dark even in daylight."

Her expression softened, and he went on.

"I don't want to live here! I almost don't want to leave you here, even granting it's your home, and I reckon with a good enough cleaning can be made a fit place for you again, as well as a safe one. But I swear, if I try to stay, I'll be back drinkin' in no time.

"And it doesn't change anything else, and that's the other part of it," he said, again to William. "You asked 'how much wrong?' and I'll say ask among your father's men. You'll know in short order, and also why I doubt you'd find many that willing to serve with me."

"Would I?" William said. "I've had more than a few, this evening, ask what became of you, as though that weren't the case."

"None that could put a name to me, I'll wager. " Eric said. "Ask among any that know me by name. Then take it that anything I'm accused of, I've been guilty of a time or two."

"Or five, or ten times," muttered Gort. "A year."

"Says the pot to the kettle!" Eric retorted, glancing at him. "Not sayin' it's not true."

"Any more true than for the rest of us?" William heaved a sigh. "All of us who've survived in my father's camp—even those who call ourselves noble—we're all more than a bit rough. When I look at most of those come to us, these past years, you're nothing worse, as far as I've seen. Even I'd be wolf's-head under standing law, anywhere in these isles, for raiding on the royal supply trains." He met Snow White's gaze for a moment. "My father will likely ask to declare some form of a general amnesty, later."

"And I will likely grant it," she said. "In any case, Eric, as regards you—accepting what you say doesn't change anything for me, either." She slipped her hand round to rest on his arm. "I will grant the risk! But what sort of queen do I become, if I fail to speak for you as that friend without whose help I could not have done any of what I have, because I simply would not be alive to do it?"

"A sensible one, _and_ kind, when I'm the one that's asking you not!" He let his hand drop to the side of the bed, and she sighed and shook her head, a little wearily.

"Once begun, where does injustice end?"

"I wouldn't know to call it injustice," he said, flat. He pulled his hands together on the bedclothes at his waist, set hand over wrist and glanced first at William, and then at Jeff, who had now stepped aside from behind the prince's chair, to lean against the wall by the door. "William, you might start with Jeff, here. He knew enough, earlier, to call me known locally as a bad lot and a drunk, and could say my reputation wasn't easy at Hammond's, either." He waited for William to turn and follow his gaze. "I'll take that to mean he knows I'm suspected of everything from petty theft, up to hunting your rebels for bounty."

William snapped round to stare at him. "Did you ever?!"

"Aye!" Eric set his jaw stubbornly. "I won't say recently, or with any great success—I'm no more competent than the next man, when I'm drunk—but you step back a year or two, and you'll find I'm suspected with reason of being among those who preyed on you. One of that same bad lot from among whom Finn hired his gang. And no, I'll not guarantee that no one never died through my efforts."

"Dear God." William pushed himself to his feet and looked a question at Jeff. "Is that true? How much do you know of it?"

Jeff folded his good arm under his bad, and gave William a bleak stare.

"I shouldn't say that I know anything, as I've only ever seen our lad here two or three times at your father's castle, and we've had no dealings as such. But he's been pointed out to me more than once, as one I might best never lend my purse to, or ever be too clear with, about where I or anyone else should be goin'."

William rounded on them, frowning. "I'd call that thin without others saying more, but with you saying it yourself, Eric, it's serious enough."

"It is, and I know it," Eric said. He turned again to Snow White, "Now, do you need it drawn any clearer, why that should be?"

"I may." Her gaze went unfocused for a moment, confounded. "You are saying that in the past, you have hunted Duke Hammond's men as rebels, for Ravenna's bounty on their heads, and you think with some success."

"I _know_ with some success, among the men I hunted with."

"I'll wager you never did any such thing," she said, stifled, "before your wife's murder."

"No, but I did after." He sighed. "And now you know it, you know how far it taints you to deal with me further."

"Does it?" she asked. "I think it changes nothing between us, and if you think I will not speak for you, you're wrong."

"Between now and tomorrow, you haven't time," he said, "and damn it, Your Highness, I could just as easily say it's none of your business! It's not your task to make things right between me and anyone else—and it's sure as hell not within your rights, to forgive me on behalf of anyone else!—any more than you'd say it was mine, to get between you and Ravenna!"

"May I not try?"

" _Did we not just have this conversation?!_ " He leaned back, pulled his worse hand to his eyes, and rubbed his forehead wearily. "Damn, but you are stubborn!"

He let his hand fall and appealed to William, now standing arms folded, with an expression gone grim. "Y'know, William, not that long before you got here, she was tellin' me she knows better than to imagine she could change how anyone thinks of me, by saying she'd think different."

"She does know, she's just lost sight of it," said William. "I could say distracted by you looking fetching in your underwear!—an' ah-AH!" He shot out a hand, finger pointed at her, as Snow White snapped round fast enough to make her hair swing once more around her shoulders. "Not a word! You might make the argument to me, Snow, that you're not just besotted with him, but I promise there'so no other, not knowin' you, will buy it! " He looked round at the others, brows lifted, and turned and opened his hand. "I ask you straight, would any of you?"

For a moment, none of the group said anything, or moved, beyond staring at him wide-eyed. Then Jeff cleared his throat, and shook his head.

"Truth, Lord William? No." He made to turn away, towards the fire in the outer room. "Without having been here this hour, no. I wouldn't."

"Aye," murmured Alf Coyle, and thrust his hands in his pockets. "That—forgive me, Your Highness—would be how it'd seem."

"And you, ladies?" asked William. Anna shared a glance with Goody Coyle, who had slipped back a little, to seat herself on the bench behind them. Then Anna shook her head.

"It's not fair, but yes." she said. "That's how it would be seen—and used against you, Princess."

"Sooner or later," said William.

"You're the rightful heir," he went on, "but to most of those you'll face tomorrow, Snow, you're also an unknown and mostly unproven girl. There's no injustice can end with no more than your word right now, no matter how much you want it, and Eric's right. The very fact of your being seen to want it, because of everything each of you happens to be, could ruin you both. You, through loss of that trust you've earned—and he could lose his life, if anyone mislikes his being your friend, enough."

"That's how I'd figure it," said Eric, softly.

William nodded, and folded his arms again. "When you face your people as their queen, they need to see it's with none at your shoulder, and no hand you're holding for safety. That it's you who'll rule, knowing your own mind and burning with that fire of your own inspiration and wisdom in your heart, of which you convinced us all two nights ago." He drew a breath. "It doesn't mean you may not ask for any help that any of us have to offer, and we'll not give it gladly—but if you look like you're leaning on any man, or want to, especially in front of any who might prefer to imagine you still a child—it could cost us all dearly, to teach them you're not."

He swung round again, to sit down, and gazed at Eric.

"You also know, that what you've just said means you can't stand with us tomorrow, either."

"I hadn't planned to," said Eric. "It's only chance, that I didn't leave tonight."

"What?!" Snow White stared round at him, lips parted, then looked from him to William and back. "Eric, that's the whole other reason I was looking for you this evening. To know that you would be there tomorrow!"

"I'd best not be!"

"But— _no_ —"

William leaned forward again on the arm of his chair, "What is first duty of a ruler?"

"Justice." She hesitated. "For _all_ , William."

"Aye." He nodded. "Exactly _._ " He held out his hand, palm open, to Eric. "I could stand your being indifferent to Ravenna's rule, if you'd never done worse than be indifferent. But when you tell me you ever joined in hunting those of us who stood against her—not to mince words, if you ever shared in a bounty against us, good men will have died because of it, and there will be those among us tomorrow, from families that suffered."

He drew the hand back, and turned again to Snow White. "I won't deny his care of you, Snow or your love for each other now. But place him now among those who've risked everything so long, in hopes of ever seeing rightful rule restored in this land, and it will amount to—to your presuming to forgive him every wrong against them with no consent of theirs, and call his service greater." He paused. "Don't tell me you choose to do that."

"She's not getting the chance." Eric regarded him levelly. "I won't be at the coronation, William. I'm planning to set out for home in the morning, soon as that gate opens."

"Oh, no, you're not." Snow White turned on him, and held up her hand. "You just wait!"

She looked again at William, her expression set. "You know what drives me mad, in this? If I believe you, I could wonder what value is there in being queen!

"It seems, Eric, that I cannot tell any truth of you, and be believed. I cannot testify to any good of you, or hope that anything I might say of your care of me will weigh heavier than a grain of sand, against any others' "knowledge" of you from times past, or even an unproven possibility that you have ever managed to harm anyone, when you had any wit to do better!"

"It's the price of your youth," said Anna, straightening, by the corner of the bed. "That, and the innocence of being so long shut away from the world."

Snow White paused, meeting her eyes. "That sacrifice you said would come?"

"Yes." Anna nodded, arms folded, and bowed her head, the light catching the tracing of scars down her cheeks.

"I hadn't expected anything quite so soon, " she said. "but yes. Knowing you must come to rule as a woman with the aid of men only knowing you as a child, I suspected you might have to set aside anything left of girlhood very quickly." She lifted her head. "Princess, you need to be nothing they might expect of that child. Show no weakness they may patronize you for, and no reliance on any man's protection, that you can avoid."

"Anna, if no one speaks for him, what will ever change?"

"What I make change, myself," said Eric. He sighed and shifted enough to make himself more comfortable. "In aid of which, there's something I'd ask from you, that may help to settle this."

"What?" she asked.

He gave it a moment's thought. "It's something you won't want to give me, but I've reason enough for asking."

"What?"

"I need you to do it on trust." He gazed into her eyes. "It's the one thing I'll ask of you now, and I promise it isn't anything forever."

She pulled back a little, chin lifting. "I don't know that I should trust you, the way you lie about things..."

He grinned at that. "We could call it a deal, and shake hands on it."

"I'd sooner trust you!" she said, and her lips quirked. "All right, Huntsman, if it's mine to give, it's yours. What is it?"

"A year and a day," he said. She stilled, watching him, and he drew a careful breath. "A year and a day without me. A year in which you let me go, and live your life, and become the queen you were born to be, and let's say others may tell you of me, but you don't ask, and you neither come nor send after me."

"And what is reason enough, I should do this?"

"You're not alone now, but for me," he said. "I don't question you know that! But you don't feel it yet, the way you need to. If you did, you'd never have thought to come lookin' for me this evening. You'd have had more faith that I'd find any help I needed, too."

He held out his hand again, and rubbed her fingers when she reached to take it.

"You must learn to make your way now, among all the others there are. Past these walls, you've got a whole country that's waited half your life, for you to come to it—an' you saw how people came when you walked out of that chapel, night before last.

"Further, you need to start with any still living, who knew you before. I'll not have you putting my care of you before that of anyone like William, who's been a fair mess half his life over losing you, or any of those still living, who've loved you since you were born."

"Who hardly know me now," she said "And what they know is the memory of the child I was. You're the only one that knows me as no more than who I am now."

"So you need to give them some chance to know you now!" he said. He let her hand slip lightly, free, back into her lap. "And I'll tell you flat—" poking a finger towards William. "Start with him! He's the one that can best help you now."

"Me?" said William, pulling up with an edgy look. "In _what?_ "

"Bein' that man to stand at her side, and ask the nasty questions."

He addressed Snow White. "I'd say he's more than proved he'd do, and he has the knowledge I don't, of those you must deal with, this next year and after. Where I couldn't hope to do more than say 'Damnit, Princess, they're all noble, for God's sake never turn your back on them, and keep that knife handy down your boot!' he'll know better who you may trust and must be wary of, and what'll be expected of you.

"Further, that rattled look of his says to me, loud and clear, that he sees the size of the problem."

"Well, no," said William, "It's just, I'm not sure how much more I know, about—" He cut off. "Everything." He drew a sigh. "Today changes all our lives, you know."

Eric nodded. "Oh, aye. I'll believe that, seeing how fast you traded sword for bow this morning, Prince Robin Hood—'less you teach her to shoot, I'd suspect your father'll have you back to knightly arms only from now on, and no more hangin' about wi' the archers."

"It seems—" Snow White stopped. "Oh, more than seems I have no choice in this. That what I must sacrifice is my own justice, until I prove myself, and you yourself again. But if that's how it must be, there's still one thing I'd have."

"What?"

"You, there, tomorrow. Not just for me—for all of it. To see the end, and the beginning." She fell silent, studying him. "Eric, if you choose not to be there at all, when I'm crowned, I can only feel it as your withholding your blessing from all we've done together, and what I must now hope to do. I can't imagine that's what you'd want."

"No!" He gave her his own edgy look. "But I'd think best not."

"Eric, I've an answer for that," William said. "You do have the right to be there on your own. Like everyone who came in that gate with us yesterday, you earned that much, and I can't think of anybody who'd deny you.

"So come. Be there, somewhere. I'm thinking at the edge of the crowd, where you can move—and once she's crowned, and all eyes are on her, you move. Just step out, where she can see you, and—you may look for him, Snow, and nod, or lift your head, so he knows.

"Count your year and a day from there."

With that, William pushed back his chair, and rose. "If either of you happens not to like that idea, you'll have to find a better on your own. I'm tired enough, I'll sooner go get some sleep, than sit and watch you fight over it."

"I'd like it." Snow White smiled, and looked up at him. "We could be here all night, otherwise, and," she added, looking back at Eric, "I wouldn't bargain on your not simply going to sleep, still refusing me. Would you say 'yes' then, to this?"

"I would." Eric heaved a sigh. "Aye, and thank you, William, for not makin' that necessary, but don't leave first. I'll be glad to stop goin' in circles with Her Highness, but I'll still need that word with you. "

"You're welcome, and I'll stay for that." William managed the shadow of a smile. "Come on, Snow. On your feet and off to bed with you—along with everyone else we've brought, as I think I can make do with neither escort nor chaperone, later."

"I expect." She rose and looked round at Greta, who rose with her, and Gort, who had climbed down from the bench and was now making his way out between Goody Coyle and Anna. "Anna, are you ready to be done?"

"Not quite," Anna replied. "There's a thing or two I'm going to leave with the goodwife, but go on ahead, I'll be along soon enough, and Jeff can stay to be my escort."

"Which would leave but one thing to look after," said Gort, from the foot of the bed. "Aside from me sayin' good night to you, Huntsman, an' she may not see you for a year, but I doubt I'll have any such luck!—" He grinned evilly at Eric, then rather more begnignly at Snow White, "Eh, you do plan on sayin' good night to him again, don't you, Princess?"

"I do." Snow White turned and looked back at him. Smiled, and held out her hand, and he took it. He reached up, then, to hold her lightly as she bent and slipped her free arm carefully around him, and leaned in and pressed her lips again to his. A longer moment, this time, in which to think this might be just a little more than wise, with such an audience, and then she drew back, to bend again and hug him tight. "Be safe, dearest Huntsman, and well, and I shall trust I see you then, tomorrow."

"Aye," he said, and let her go.

"Then we shall see about what others may be, after that," she said, and turned, and smiled, and pressed William's arm an instant, as she moved towards the door. "Good night, the rest of you as well. I shall look to see all of you somewhere, tomorrow."


	9. Prince, Huntsman, and The End, For Now

"So what's this 'word' then, that you were wanting with me?" William asked, turning back from the door when it had closed at Gort's heels.

"That was me bein' a sideways liar," Eric told him. He leaned back, blew out a breath, and ran his hand back through his hair. "I knew by the time Her Highness there had done with me, we'd need a word about what to do next." He let his hand fall, and pushed carefully back to sitting. "I'm just hopin' she won't quite have realized that it must be her we'd be talkin' about."

"Aye, well, you might have got away with that part," said William, folding his arms, "but I'm not sure what you think is left to be said."

"Oh, I think there's a few things, yet," Eric said. "An' thanks, Master Coyle, but there's no need," he added, when Alf Coyle came to tug the curtain across at the side of the alcove. "After everything else that's been said before everyone this evening, I'd as soon have as many witnesses as we can to the rest of it, too."

He shot a glance at William, who had stilled at this, his face questioning, then fixed his own gaze on his host, and pushed on. "With all the to-ing and fro-ing here tonight, I'd guess your neighbours will be lining up tomorrow, to ask you an' your good wife whatever was goin' on, and I'm not going to pretend either of you won't answer—or shouldn't—because I think it'll help, you having seen how things stand."

"Countin' on that, are ye?" Coyle came in to stand beside him, set hands on hips, and studied him with a mild but frank distrust.

"Power of a good story, and all that, I figure it should be half-way round the castle before breakfast." Eric gave him enough of a smile to win one back, though it might still be a touch dubious. "Eh, you already know how I came to fall in wi' the princess—and everything else about that trek through the Dark Forest, and onto the fens. You're as fit to know the rest, too."

He made a cautious gesture, left-handed, towards the bench. "Sit down an' make yourself comfortable, and leave room for your lady when she and Anna are done. You've daughters, as you said, and she and Jeff have a young one, too." He spared a glance for Jeff, as hearing his name made the other swing round from before the fire."You may be able to tell Lord William and I a thing or two, that'll bear on keeping our princess safe."

He spared a glance then, at William, and sighed at the other's darkening expression **. "** Fact is, there's no way stories won't be told of Her Highness and I, as we go on.

"I'd be just as happy if nothing needed be said, except that we made a deal, an' eventually I did get her to Duke Hammond's castle wi' the help of Lord William and the dwarves, an' then we were done the way we expected. Maybe that I did come on here with her, after, an' fought with the rest once there was any chance of winning.

"But I'm not that goddamned stupid."

He pulled his arm in closer, to brace his side, and looked round at the others again.

"I am not _nearly_ that goddamned stupid! Tongues will wag! People will wonder about all of it. How she came to escape, how Finn came to seize on me to hunt her—"

"Through that matter of you bein' asleep in the mud at the time?" Coyle snorted and seated himself. "And so the only one not fit to swear ignorance of ever having _seen_ the Dark Forest—"

"And damn, but wakin' up in that horse trough was an icy business!" Eric sighed. "So I got to meet the princess, and we ended up travelling together. And now there's just no way that question'll never be asked, of just how much might have happened between us, along the way. Especially those days we were alone together! Then, whether it's people wonderin' about what I made of her, bein' fresh and lovely as she is, or she of me, as the first man she'd ever met as a free woman—it's just too damn much the sort of story that folk get all too much fun nattering about."

He glanced again at William. "Except for the ones who get angry, faster. Like you would, Lord William, _if_ you didn't right well know better, after a week of tramping up and down the hills after us."

"Aye," said William, "and after seeing this past hour, I hardly know if I _do_ know better!"

He looked away, letting a hand fall, then pulled in a breath and turned aside. Still half hugging himself, reached for the chair he'd been sitting in, jerked it a step nearer the bed, and dropped heavily into it.

"I don't know what you think you've accomplished, Huntsman, by any of what you've bound her to tonight, or yourself." He shook his head, and briefly, the line of his jaw set. "I also don't know how you imagine this working tomorrow, or a year from now, either!—but I think I can promise you, that it will not be as you think!

"Further," he went on, "even with some faith that you didn't look for any of this to happen, you'll have to forgive me not being especially happy about it."

"Aye. I'd understand that," said Eric. "You were childhood sweethearts, weren't you?" He looked down, himself, at William's curt nod. "Well, if it's makin' you unhappy, with you _knowing_ how things were, I expect your father would be livid over any of it."

"You don't imagine I'm going to tell him!"

Eric shook his head. "It won't need you to tell him. Like I said, the questions'll come soon enough. Soon as everyone starts looking to put that story together, that'll make sense of everything ever known about either of us, or fancied, either."

He tweaked the bandage straighter over his chest. "My hope is that with me not here to be doted on, and Her Highness keeping her word about provin' herself, with no askin' after me, God willing those questions won't be asked above whispers.

"If any ask louder, how much may have been between her and me, my word would be to lift your brows at 'em, and tell them the truth: I was sent to hunt her, and when that devil's deal went wrong, she and I made another, that I'd guide her to the Duke's. Which, in the end, she judged I did, and I was paid, and we were done, and after that—what of it? For sure, if there were anything more to it, would I not still be here, and there not more to see?"

Eric turned again to Alf Coyle, and held out his hand. "That's where you and your wife may come into it, Master Coyle, and Anna and Jeff also. No less Gort and the rest! I shouldn't be surprised if even young Greta may not have words to say in this as well, for yours will be the power of plain folks knowin' better how matters stand, than most."

"Aye," said Coyle. He glanced aside at his wife, now returned with Anna to stand by the foot of the bed **,** and held out his hand to her. "Though you'll have to tell me, Mother, what passed while I was takin' the princess' ladies back to their quarters."

"Aye, later," she said. She took his hand and came to settle herself beside him, and Eric drew in a sigh.

"Just start with Her Highness showin' up at my bedside, and givin' me the fright of my life, and then carry on from there!" He looked up at Anna. "I was doin' just fine, there, wasn't I, until I rolled over?"

"So you were," she said. She glanced aside at Jeff, now standing again at the back of William's chair, then came behind him, circling them both, to consider the lamp on the chest beside the bed. She pulled it closer, steadied it, and turned the wick lower. "And now, what would you say? Had you not realized she loved you, before?"

"No! I hadn't!" he said. "Her showin' up like that was the last damn thing I ever expected!" He made a show of stopping short, and pulled a hand to his face. "An' oh, dear God, I'm a lucky man, because y'know what thought next occurs to me?"

"What?" she asked. She perched herself on the chair Snow White had left, and he turned to look at her.

"If I'd not been hurt, and this'd been any normal taking of a town," he said, "or even a castle, in a place with fewer women about, doing their damnedest to be homely—she might have come lookin' for me as she did, and found me abed as she did. But I might well not have been alone!

" _Or_ decent," he added, as the Coyles both grinned and chuckled. Jeff muffled a snort, and Anna brushed her fingers to her eyes, then smiled and shook her head.

"Eh," said Coyle. He rocked back, slapped his thigh, and laughed again. "Then she might've had cause to find you even more fetching, without your underwear!"

"I'm not thinking it would work out that happily!" He leaned back and stared at the ceiling. "I'd not expect ever to live that down. Not that I'm ever like to live this down, either! But at least it'll be with no harm done to her."

He looked back again at William. "You may not see what I hope to do, wi' that 'year and a day' bit, but you'll not deny it's bought us time. I'll hope that's all it may take, to mend what I'd say has happened, here."

"That being what, past her falling in love with you?"

"No! Because she hasn't," Eric said. "There's a bond between us now, but it's not love."

"Oh-ho! Stuff and nonsense!" said Goody Coyle, and folded her arms. "Pull the other one, it's got bells on."

"She's no' in love with me!" He slapped his right hand down hard on the bed beside him, and they all started a little. "Would none of you guess what I see happening, here?"

He glared round, and all but Jeff and William traded glances.

"Have you never seen ducklings following their mother? Have you never seen how sometimes, if the farmwife chances to take them up when they're hatching, they'll follow her instead? Like she's the first thing they see in life, and the sun rises and sets with her? Our princess, for all she's now a woman grown, is hardly more than such a fluffy duck!

"Leavin' aside the past twelve days, that she's mostly spent runnin' for her life, she's spent most of that life locked up in one little room, with nobody to talk to! Then the day she breaks out of it, she ends up with _me_.

"Then we end up trekking across the Dark Forest for five days, not so much together as me leadin', her followin', an' both of us edgy about it, not to mention each prayin' to stay upwind the other—and do you no' see what I'm saying? Even with all the things wrong with it, there was a bond tied there, for her, that now needs to be severed, quick as may be. Because it'll no' do, that I be the one she follows!"

"As she said," said Jeff, "her anchor in the world."

Eric nodded. "Aye. Beith said similar, that for all my failin's, I was still the man she looked to, to hand her across the rough and slippery places. An' you all know what I mean, when I say it'd not do!"

Anna nodded, and he challenged the Coyles with a look, and they did likewise. "So you all heard what I just asked, and you heard her grant it."

"Aye," said Coyle.

"You see, then, that I'm cutting her free as far as I can, because I can't help her further. Because it's time for her to become the queen she was meant to be. I don't want her history to be that of a woman who betrayed her destiny by getting distracted with a man!" He set his jaw stubbornly. "If she does, it'll not be me _._ "

"Aye," said William. "Well, that's all very well to say." He pushed to his feet, swung his chair around, and gave a nod to Jeff, for him to drag back to its place. "Just don't look for her not to surprise you, a year and a day from now."

"Oh, I wouldn't be surprised if she'd try," he said. "That's where you come into it."

"Me?!" William stared at him. "What am I meant to do, by your reckoning?"

"Be that man she needs at her side." he said.

"I'm not the man she wants there." William folded his arms and regarded him steadily. "It's not me that she cares for, Huntsman."

"William." He met the other's eyes with his grimmest stare. "She doesn't care for me, either. Not in the way you mean."

"You're still the man that was able to bring her back from—" The prince cut off, and looked down, then away. "From under Ravenna's spell. As she'd insist she wasn't dead."

"Was I? Did I?" He shook his head and waited for Willliam to return his look. "I wouldn't be in any haste to think so. I'd easier suspect that spell was already lifting, by the time she knew anything of my being there. I think it may have helped, that she heard me, but the fact is, William, that I wasn't there when she woke! An' for me, that makes the whole thing suspect, because why should we think that me kissing her would do anything, if your doing didn't?!"

" _Why?_ "

"Because damnit, William, this is not some bloody fairy tale, d'you not get that?" He slapped his hand down hard on the bed again. "An' that was not true love's first kiss!"

He set his hands down carefully, bracing himself, and held that defiant look. "That was me not havin' any place I cared to go, where there was anyone, that night. So I went into the church, once things were quiet, an' went and sat down next to a pillar, and got drunk. Then, at a point when it seemed worth doing, I got on my feet and went and talked to her.

"I told her about how I had a wife, once, that I loved more than anyone or anything, and then one day I let her out of my sight, an' she was gone, and I stopped bein' the man she'd made me. Until she'd come along, an' her heart and her spirit reminded me. That they'd both deserved better. An that I was so sorry I'd failed her, too—an' then I kissed her goodbye." He bowed his head, and shook it. "An' then, somehow, I got the hell out of there.

"It wasn't love! It was just this bloody tangle of grief and loss and me feelin' sorry I failed her, and her feelin' all that was wrong, an' half my love in it belonging to somebody else, and more than half, if I'm honest. Love and grief and sheer, blind, bloody, drunken chance, and I'd guess her knowing loneliness too well, not to feel for my future.

"Because love her though I may, William, I am no more in love with her than you are! And yes, you heard me, _no more than you are_." He fixed the younger man with as hard a stare as he could still muster. "Because you've no more loved _her_ your whole life, than I have.

"Whatever that boy you were felt for the girl he knew—children haven't the same need of it, and you thought she was dead. And anything I could feel for her was based on twelve days! I might add you've now known her seven!—so by any real measure, she's only had five days longer with me at her side.

"And having just now bought us each a year, the one thing I've to say to you, is get busy!"

He looked around, then, when Anna reached her hand around his shoulders and gently rubbed between them.

"She's clever," he said. "I think she'll learn the wiles of men quickly enough, if she does not better than half see through us already. But as she is, at her best, she doesn't more than half pay attention, and if there's nothing clearly threatening about, she's wandering off in all directions, and God help the man who hopes to keep track of her."

"Like the young girl she was when locked up," said Anna. "Our Lily's nine, and I'm only just beginning to trust her."

"Aye." He relaxed and met her eyes, as she went on stroking his back. "She's a child, Anna. A royal child, who'd see and be taught more, earlier than most, and know to be wary of things most children wouldn't think of, but still—an eight or nine year old, locked up?"

"No chance to learn more," said Goody Coyle, aside to her husband, and he nodded.

"Aye." He looked at her. "Now think how close we had to watch ours, when they were that age."

"Say she's now a little older," said Anna. "I could have said a quiet fourteen. But no, not woman yet, not quite."

Eric nodded. "So what would you think, Anna? I think I've just done all I could, and given now, the way I find she's feelin' about me, it's the only thing safe for either of us. Would you see anything else I might have done?"

"Not really." She let her arm settle, warm, around his shoulders, and smiled. "You know, Eric, you're a better man than I'd thought."

"And you'd agree, it's not wise for me to be anywhere near her, this next while?"

"If I'm honest, yes." She sighed. "I wish she might have had a little more time before losing you, but this next while, it's as you've said."

"An' I've just given her my word to show up at the coronation tomorrow."

"Aye, so you have. Making it time you were properly to bed," she said. She darted a glance across him at Goody Coyle, and the old woman pushed to her feet.

"I'll just get that tea we've made for him, then," she said. She tapped her husband on the shoulder before she turned. "On your feet, my old lad. It's our bedtime soon, as well."

"Aye," he said, rising. "But what's this about tea?"

"Willow bark for pain, and a thing or two else for—I won't say sleep," said Anna, "but a quieter mind." She looked up at Coyle, and smiled. "No more of that brandy I'll guess you gave him earlier, please."

He looked up again at William, still standing watching him thoughtfully, but with his face a good deal calmer. "I think she understands enough that she won't look to stop me, William, but if she does, you need to see the plan goes awry."

"She won't," said William. "No fear of that." He stepped aside, by the end of the bed, as Goody Coyle bustled in again with a cup of something that steamed, and smelled sharply of lemon, and patted it comfortably into Eric's fingers, as he took it.

"The other thing I'd warn," Eric said, watching him, "is that eighteen—" He looked around warily at Anna, as she rose. "That's a good four or five years past when most mothers start lookin' around to see who their girls might think of marrying."

She raised an eyebrow at him, and he sighed, and took a careful sip of the tea. "Because if they don't start givin' it some thought," he went on, "the girls will set about choosing for themselves, wi' no great thought to consequences!"

"Ah, yes." She folded her arms and considered him, thoughtful. "I'm sorry to say so, but yes. One does best to keep a good watch..."

"Because the first to catch their fancy will likely be unsuitable." He gave her a sassy smile. "Like me, when I was younger!"

"Like you, right bloody now!" she said. She grinned and reached to brush his hair tidy. "And for the next thirty years, I shouldn't wonder, if nobody murders you! So have you a point to go with that comment? "

"Aye." He shifted a glance again between her and William. "Now, just think about four or five years' worth of everything that might add up to any urge or impulse for a girl to get herself into mischief, and consider that in our girl, _it's all getting loose at once._ " He shifted his gaze to William. "You and your father may be in for a lively next year or two."

"Oh, thanks," said William, "for that thought!"

"So I mean it, about you sticking close!" Eric drank down the rest of the tea, and handed the cup back to the goodwife. "Thanks, I think."

She withdrew, and he looked up again at William, and braced himself wearily, as Anna once more set about rearranging his pillows. "She'll need the likes of you and your father to teach her sense and all she must consider, and see to it she's not forced to anything, and keep her safe from any who might ever treat her as ordinary—and best you can, protect her from herself.

"And I will also say, win her to you if you can. Pray she turns out enough like the girl you've been dreaming about as a lost hope, all these years, that you can love her as much in the end. Though just give her any chance, and I think you'll find she's better."

William sighed in turn. "Lord knows, I can try."

"No!" Eric said. "Don't try! You damn well do it! Start by tellin' her how much it means to have her back, and for all our sakes, be stubborn about it!"

"Because," looking up into William's wondering expression, "unless there's any other handsome prince you can think of out there, who'd be right for her, I should say you're it, and better you than me."

The smile that quirked the prince's lips, this time, was as genuine as he might have hoped. "All very well to say, Huntsman. I'll still say never underestimate her. I think she'll have it in her, to surprise us both."

* * *

It took a moment to be sure, at that distance, that it was him. Certain he could not hope to see her smile, with the length of the great chapel between them, but he should have no doubt of that moment when she bowed her head in that acknowledgement that likely most of the crowd would take for prayer. Which in a sense it was.

_Be safe, love, and well._

_A year will hardly be so long, no longer being alone—and I shall bear it all the easier, knowing you will not be, either._

_You just don't know it, yet._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there, dear readers, you have it...for now.
> 
> If you happen to have already read this story under my "Aughra" account on ffnet, don't worry, I'm not plagiarising. Aughra and Plush are the same person.
> 
> Back to work on the sequel, which I hope to begin posting both here and on ffnet (in suitably different versions) by the spring of 2014.


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